16 other operations, 1 validating backups, 1 what to validate – Acronis Backup for VMware 9 - User Guide User Manual

Page 96: Other operations, Validating backups, P. 96)

16 Other Operations

16.1 Validating backups

Validating backups is an operation that checks the possibility of data recovery from a backup. Note
that while successful validation means high probability of successful recovery, it does not check all
factors that influence the recovery process. If you back up the operating system, only a test recovery
to a new virtual machine can guarantee success of the recovery.

In Acronis Backup for VMware you can validate a Location, an Archive or a Recovery Point.
Validation of a recovery point imitates recovery of all files from the backup to a dummy destination.
Validation of an archive will validate all recovery points stored in this archive. Validation of a location
will check the recovery of all archives stored in this location.

16.1.1 What to validate

First of all, you should define which item type you want to validate from 3 available options: Location,
Archive or Recovery Point.

Location – Validating a location will check the integrity of all the archives inside this location. Note
that this is usually a more time-consuming process than granular validation of specific archives or
recovery points (especially if you store multiple archives in the location). The validation time also
depends on the number of the backups (recovery points) included in each archive in the selected
location. Note that password-protected archives will not be validated in this case. You should choose
the option to validate Archive instead.

New Validation Task. What to validate. Location.

Archive – Validating an archive will check the integrity of all backups (recovery points) inside the
specified archive. In general, this procedure will be faster than validating the whole location.
However, it is slower than validating a specific recovery points inside this archive.

Recovery Point – To ensure that you can revert back to some specific recovery point, you can
perform granular validation of just the selected recovery points (they don’t have to reside within one
archive).