Unitrends allows a wide variety of data protection strategies for VMware virtual infrastructure. Data protection strategies are primarily driven by the following requirements:
| • | Recovery time objectives |
| • | Recovery point objectives |
| • | Backup window |
Unitrends recommends using an incremental forever strategy to protect VMware environments. With this strategy, a full is run one time, followed by incrementals thereafter at the frequency that best suits your environment. The system then synthesizes fulls and differentials locally from the incrementals to ensure quick restores. These synthetic backups are also used for archiving and legacy vaulting, as incremental backups do not archive or vault directly. For more on synthetic backups, see KB 3560.
To use the incremental forever strategy, it is recommended that the backup system be on the latest release.
Incremental forever is the default and recommended backup strategy for VMware protection. See the table below for example backup strategies:
|
Objective |
Strategy |
|---|---|
|
Your tolerance for data loss is measured in a day or more |
Use incremental forever or a weekly VMware full backup with a daily differential. |
|
Your tolerance for data loss is measured in minutes or hours |
Use incremental forever or a weekly VMware full backup with a daily differential and hourly incrementals. |
|
Your backups need to complete within a few hours during the week but can run continuously on the weekend |
Use incremental forever or a weekly VMware full backup with daily differentials. |
|
You need to control when full backups run |
If system resources are taxed and you would like to control when a full backup runs, use a weekly VM full backup with a daily differential and/or incremental backups. Keep in mind that synthetic backups are system-side only and do not impact the client. |