vmware incremental backup of path mounted disk

[nebula]

Hello,

can anyone tell me how can I do an incremental backup of a path mounted disk ?
The scenario :

• a vm with C: and D: vmdk disks
• under D:\test there's another mounted disk with user's data (normal vmdk)
• we do a type 3-fullvm and incr. backup for this vm (with vmware vcb snapshot)

the result is a normal incremental backup for disk C: and D: but nothing for the path mounted disk. Last one is restorable (file level) only if full backup is selected.
Thanks in advance for your help!

[Anonymous]

Is this correct?
Your Virtual Machine is made up of two hard disks:
drive_c.vmdk
drive_d.vmdk

So these are seen in the Virtual Machine settings by the ESX Host from the vmx config file for the VM, and can be snapshotted/backed up type 3 fullvm for incremental.

But you say you have a mounted another vmdk file INSIDE the OS of the VM.?
And this is on a mount point/link/junction under the D: drive in the OS?
The hypervisor will not be able to perform a snapshot copy of 'normal vmdk' as it cant see it.

This answers itself. Why not shutdown the machine and add the 'normal vmdk' into the Virtual Machine config as a third hard disk. Thereafter you can control it via snapshot and storage vmotion etc.

The fact is this third vmdk is inside the OS and a link to a disk mounted as a directory with all its files, so file level full backups might well work. Not vmdk backups, which are block level style backups the way I see it.

Have you used the vmount service to mount the vmdk file?

[nebula]

Thanks Stuart, i'm sorry for a bit confusing info.
Hope to be more clear, here are the real situation.
The VM is made up of four vmdk (v1.vmdk to v4.vmdk). Two of them are mounted from the OS (W2K3) as letters C:  and D: (v1 and v2.vmdk).
The other two vmdk (v3 and v4.vmdk) are mounted from the OS as folders (used as mount points) into disk D: (e.g. d:\test1 and d:\test2).

The backup of this VM is made by a VCB proxy using vmware snapshot method. The type used is 3-Fullvm and incr.
Now, consider that both full and differential incremental backups complete successfully.
But only in the full schedules i can see the v3 and v4 disks and select them for file level restore . The incremental schedules doesn't see these disks but only C: and D: disks.

My software versions :
Master Netbackup 6.5.4 (windows 2003 x32 sp2)
VCB proxy 1.5 (windows 2003 x32 sp2)