Question about Best practices for BE 2010 Agent for VMware

[dominikD]

In the section "To use Granular Recovery Technology for individual items from Microsoft Active Directory, Exchange, or SQL, do the following:" I do not understand the last statement:

Create separate backup jobs for file servers and application or database servers. When you create file server backup jobs, be sure to uncheck the options on the Virtual Machine Application Granular Recovery Technology Settings dialog box.

Why do I have to uncheck GRT for file server? Or is it recomended to run a second "regular" file level backup job, to be able to restore single files?

[Hemant_Jain · Accepted solution]

This just says to disable application level GRT for a file server. A file server typically would not have applications like SQL, Exchange or AD is the assumption in this case. So, if you have a typical file server, you may want to disable application level GRT and leave only file level GRT enabled. So, dont uncheck GRT, go to vmware tab in the backup job properties and click on edit on the right hand side, to disable Application GRT, if there is no SQL, Exchange or AD on that virtual machine. To be able to restore single file, same backup can handle that. No need to create a separate job for files.

Please mark it a solution, if this is useful.
Thanks

[dominikD]

And what is your suggestion to handle vm file servers with huge (0.5TB - 1.0TB) virtual disk files. If I use the vm option with grt enabled to backup these file servers, backup jobs mostly crashes. And it happens always after finishing backup, as soon as it starts to delete the snapshot. The vm is then to busy and the remote agent services on the media server looses the connection and stops working.

[cre8]

My experiance so far with 2010 tells me that is the new norm. Jobs hang, error out, crash, and I get the feeling I am not alone.