cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Selection Details Include/Exclude

BKBackup
Level 2

Hi,

I am trying to figure out if there is a way to Include and only Include a disk while doing a VM back up.

To try and further clarify I have a VM with several vmdks attached to it. I can go in to the selection details and exclude the drives I do not want to backup however some drives are added and removed at different times from the VM and I am not always notified of this in time. Backupexec will automatically add this drive to the backup however I do not want to back these drives up. There is only one specific drive that needs to be backed up. Is there a way to edit the selection details to include that drive and that drive only and disregard any additions?

 

For example I would only want to include USGE-RISKMISO_4.VMDK  on every single back up. When I set up the backup only USGE-RISKMISO_4.VMDK and USGE-RISKMISO_2.VMDK existed (which i exluded at the time). Then the owner of the server added the other drives and now they are automatically included in my backup. How can I ensure that it doesnt automatically select drives? Or ensure if only backs up the one drive? Is the only option to manually go in and exlude the drives everytime one is added or renamed?

backupselection.JPG

4 REPLIES 4

pkh
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP    Certified
No. There is no way to exclude/include disks when you backup a VM as a VM. However, if you back it up as if it is a physical machine, you can then do so

Colin_Weaver
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

This is not possible. VMs have to be backed up as complete VMs based on what made up the VM at the time the backup starts.

You would have to switch back to using the agent inside the VM's if you need to deselect volumes however this then results in a more difficult DR process for each VM that you no longer backup via the virtual processes.

FYI if you play about enough there appears to be a well hidden way to exclude vmdk files - however please note that restores probably will not work if you happen to stumble across the setting and as such this is a warning just in case you do find what appears to be the option to exclude that you should NOT use it.

BKBackup
Level 2

Thanks Colin. I actually found that hiden way to exclude the drives. I was hoping there was a way that i could set it to only include a specific vmdk.

With some of our VM's we only want to catch the settings of the actual VM (c:\ drive) we dont need the database or drives on them to be backed up. We did a test restore and we were able to bring back up the actual VM machine then the data drives were just added back to the VM. Just an FYI.

Colin_Weaver
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

Not sure what you mean by excluding the drives, I think you are mixing up the two backup types

 

A VMware agent backup can only select against the VM (but exposes the vmdk names) However it is deselecting .vmdk files (method is well hidden) that will cause restore problems. I tested this recently and could not recover either GRT data or a startable VM having excluded a vmdk and we officially do not support excluding .vmdk files.

A RAWS agent backup can select volumes, files and folders, databases, System States etc from within a computer and therefore will let you deselect or exclude the drives

A VMware agent DR restore recovers everything inside the VM to a directly bootable state in one pass. The VMware agant also has an ability to recover individual files (known as GRT).

A RAWS agent DR restore will either need an SDR bootable DVD (or a manual install of a clean Operating System), to then restore files and System States with potentially a second job needed to restore databases. Hence the comments about restores being more difficult/complex.