If you have a physical server that runs your accounts package, and on that physical server you also run a VM with a CRM package, and you want to back up your financial server to your CRM virtual server (or vice-versa) - don't do it!

Regardless of WHAT you are backing up, ALWAYS use PHYSICAL MEDIA, and take the media you aren't using for backup that night home with you, or put it in a bank safe or other place that isn't in the same location as the server you backed up.

The actual backup process shouldn't be any different so long as the VM can see the backup media. You tell the VM to backup the same way as you would any other operating system.

One advantage of VMs is that it is much easier to backup the VM if you backup from the host computer. You can simply copy the VM image to the backup media and you will have a total copy of the VM. Restoration of the VM is a file copy operation away!

If you need more specific information, post here which VM you are using, what its host operating system is (NOT the operating system running in the VM), and what kind of physical media you are using.

Andrew Baker

Director, Service Operations, SWN Communications Inc.

Posted on Dec. 28, 2010

Diane,

Traditional file backup will copy all the files on your system and allow you to restore them in a group or one by one. Virtual machine backup is pretty much a form of image backup, where the "file" you backup is the entire system, and to get access to the data, you generally need to restore the entire image backup first.

I say "generally" because there are image backup technologies that still give you access to file-level restores, and some virtual machine backups so the same. (For instance, a VM backup of a Microsoft Hyper-V instance can be mounted by Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 as a disk, in order to directly access files.)

A comprehensive backup strategy will usually take advantage of both backup types, since file backups are faster for backup and restore (when less than the whole disk needs to be backed up), and image backups allow you to more quickly and easily restore an entire machine to a specific state.

You should mix and match the different options to address the recovery needs of your organization and the data you are trying to protect.

Whether or not you involve physical media in your daily backups is dependent on your focus, but it is still more cost-effective to include some form of physical backup when it comes to long-term storage vs disk-only backups.

-ASB: http://xeesm.com/AndrewBaker