Three backup questions

The virtualization experts at Veeam Software have written a mini-whitepaper outlining three key considerations in planning your VMware backup strategy. Traditional backup technologies are application-centric. But backup of your infrastructure using this approach can become very complex, with multiple backup agents to be managed and coordinated. For many, today’s application image-level (or crash consistent) backup is a better, cheaper solution. In the physical world, image-level backup usually requires shutting down the application server. With virtualization (thanks to its snapshot technology) an image can be taken easily, without bringing a virtual machine down. Moreover, technologies like VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) make it possible to offload the backup process to a dedicated proxy. This is all good, but some important considerations still remain.