Acronis True Image Echo Server for Windows - User Guide - Manual (Page 86)

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Chapter 12. Working with a virtual
environment
Virtual machine technologies provide a powerful tool to help accelerate the development,
testing, deployment and support of PC applications.
As with physical machines, virtual machine (VM) data needs to be backed up periodically
to prevent its loss due to hardware failure or human errors. Since more and more
organizations choose running their business processes in a virtual environment, they need
a solution to perform the data backup and restore on virtual machines. This chapter
covers how Acronis True Image Echo Server can be used in virtual and heterogeneous
environments.
12.1 Backing up data on virtual machines
A virtual machine is an emulated computer running within a host operating system. The
software that emulates the computer is called the virtualization software. Three of the
most popular types of virtualization software are VMware Server and VMware
Workstation, Microsoft Virtual Server and Microsoft Virtual PC, and Parallels Workstation.
Generally, a virtual machine can be treated:
1. As a physical computer (when it is online). Most Acronis True Image Echo Server
features and settings are applicable to a VM. The backup procedure is almost the same
(see details in
Chapter 5. Creating backup archives ).
2. As a set of files that change in line with the VM state. The files represent the VM
configuration, storage, memory or other parameters. The files can be backed up with
both imaging and file-level backup.
Acronis True Image Echo Server supports VMware Consolidated backup available in
VMware Infrastructure 3. This application takes snapshots of virtual machines and
uploads them to the proxy server. This enables LAN-free VM backup from the server
rather than directly from ESX server.
Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 has the Virtual Server Volume Shadow Copy Service
(VSS) writer (VS Writer), which takes the VM snapshot by the backup software request.
Support for the VS writer may be considered in future Acronis True Image Server
versions.
If you plan to back up the virtual machine files, stop or suspend the virtual machine.
Since the virtual disk file changes from session to session and therefore will be always
included in the backup, incremental or differential backups are not appropriate in this
case. An incremental backup size will be almost equal to a full backup size.
12.2 Recovering data on virtual machines
A virtual disk can be restored from its image (.tib file), previously created with Acronis
True Image Echo Server just as physical disk can be recovered.
If the virtual machine cannot start, boot it into Acronis rescue environment using physical
bootable media or RIS server, or by adding the bootable media ISO to the virtual
machine. Another option is to create a new virtual machine with same configuration and
disk size as the imaged machine and recover data to this disk.