VMware application-aware protection

To provide application-aware protection of Windows VMs, the appliance requires local administrator credentials to interface with the VM’s application-specific VSS writers. For Windows servers that are running UAC, you must either disable UAC or use the server's default local administrator account when applying credentials. (UAC does not apply to the default local administrator account unless specified by a Group Policy, but does apply to other accounts that belong to the Local Administrator group).

See these topics for details on creating and applying credentials to the Windows asset:

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To add a credential

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To apply a credential to an asset

Once credentials have been applied to the Windows VM, the appliance discovers any hosted SQL or Exchange applications, and leverages VSS writers to quiesce data and perform any necessary post-backup processing.

To protect Windows VMs hosting Exchange or SQL simple recovery model applications, Unitrends recommends that you set credentials to ensure an application consistent backup. Log file truncation is handled by VMware application-aware backups as described here:

Application	Log file truncation with VMware application-aware backup
Exchange	Logs are truncated with VMware full and incremental backups.
SQL	Logs are NOT truncated with VMware application-aware backups. Do the following: • Simple recovery model - No SQL logs are created. Use VMware application-aware backups. • Full recovery model - Use agent backups or use VMware application-aware backups with separate transaction log backups to truncate logs. (Schedule periodic transaction log backups using a SQL Maintenance Plan. Do not use a SQL Maintenance Plan with agent backups.) • Bulk-logged recovery model - Use agent backups. See Recommendations for bulk-logged recovery model for details.

Note:   Application-aware backups cannot be used to protect VMware templates or VMs on non-Windows operating systems.

Once you have configured and enabled credentials for a Windows VM, application-aware backups are run. If the appliance cannot gain access using these credentials, the backup fails.

If credentials have not been enabled for the Windows VM, the appliance does not attempt application-aware backup. Application data is included in the host-level backup.