GRT restores

[M_Strong]

Semi-related, not trying to hijack the thread:  I am looking to make a case for the VMWare agent vs. the RAWS agent methodology for our backup strategy.

Aside from the above advantages - and without having any deduplication licenses - Are there any space savings recognized by using the VMWare agent / VM backup method in place of a basic RAWS backup?
(ie.  Backing up the same Windows server using both methods, will one backup-set be decidedly smaller?)

Not having the VMWare license or a budget for it, I have not been able to benchmark the two methods for identifying any differences.

Also, is there any advantage to having the VMWare license for VMWare level backups in conjunction with the Application & Database license?  If using the VMWare level backup method provides the ability to restore individual files, then we should be able to restore SQL database files if needed?
Or, (I'm guessing here) the VM level backup will not truncate the SQL logs during the backup, so any SQL data file backed up using the VMWare method might not be restorable, unless the database was backed up by SQL and then the SQL generated database.bak file could be restored independantly.
And - Same question regarding Exchange DBs - If using only VMWare level backups do we lose the ability to perform GRT restores?

              Much appreciated,

[pkh · Accepted solution]

Branched off from https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/regular-windows-agent-vs-vmware-agent You can do GRT restores of your Exchange from your VM backups. Likewise, you can restore individual SQL databases from your VM backups. You would still need to purchase Agent for Applications and Databases license to backup Exchange and SQL databases Backing up the VM does not teammate the SQL transaction logs, but this will not affect your ability to restore individual databases. To truncate the logs you need to run a separate job to backup the logs and truncate them.

[M_Strong]

Thank you for the insight.

What about potential space savings?  Are there any differences in space usage for VM backups vs RAWS backups?  (Assuming all Full Backups, Thick-Provisioned VMDKs and Simple Disaster Recovery...)

[pkh]

With thick provisioning, the entire VMDK is backed up and this means that more data would be backed up