Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2010
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A virtual machine can be online (running), offline (stopped), suspended, or switch between the three
states during backup.
A virtual machine has to be offline (stopped) during the recovery to this machine. The machine will
be automatically stopped before recovery. You can opt for manual stopping of machines (p. 127).
Virtual machine backup vs. the machine's volumes backup
Backing up a virtual machine means backing up all the machine's disks plus the machine
configuration. With this source type, you can back up multiple machines. This comes in handy when
having small (in terms of virtual disk size) but numerous legacy servers such as those resulting from
workload consolidation. A separate archive will be created for each machine.
Backing up volumes within a virtual machine is similar to backing up a physical machine's volumes.
With this source type, you select the machine and then select the disks/volumes to back up. This
comes in handy when the operating system and applications, such as a database server, run on a
virtual disk, but the data, such as a database, is stored on a large capacity physical disk added to the
same machine. You will be able to use different backup strategies for the virtual disk and the physical
storage. The virtual machine configuration will be also backed up.
Limitations
A Hyper-V virtual machine that uses at least one pass-through disk (a physical disk, either local or
SAN-LUN, attached to the virtual machine) cannot be backed up from the host. To back up such
machine or its disks, install Agent for Windows or Agent for Linux on the machine.
An online (running) ESX/ESXi virtual machine that has an independent disk or an RDM disk attached
in the physical compatibility mode cannot be backed up from the host. To back up such machine or
its disks, either stop the machine or install Agent for Windows or Agent for Linux on the machine.
Virtual machine backup vs. physical machine backup
Backing up an entire virtual machine or its volumes yields a standard disk backup (p. 374). With
Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agent for Windows or Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agent for Linux,
you can mount its volumes, recover individual files from this backup, and recover disks and volumes
from the backup to a physical machine.
Similarly, you can recover disks or volumes from a physical machine backup created with the Agent
for Windows or the Agent for Linux, to a new or existing virtual machine using either of the agents
for virtual machines. Hence, physical to virtual and virtual to physical machine migration becomes
available.
Guest operating systems
The following guest operating systems are supported.
Microsoft Windows platform
:
Microsoft Windows 2000
Microsoft Windows XP
Microsoft Windows Server 2003
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2
Microsoft Vista
Microsoft Windows Server 2008
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2