Hello everyone!
My client has vSphere environment set up where they run 2008 VMs, mostly with transactional applications such as MS SQL and Exchange. In that respect, they would do best to rely on application-consistent backups. I'm currently studying backup consistency using SMVI and I came across the following text in SMVI Best Practices document:
Since SMVI (with VMware snapshots turned on) relies on VMware quiescing of virtual machines when creating backups, it is able to provide application-consistent backup through VMware VSS requester/provider components for the applications running inside the virtual machines. In fact, all SMVI backups with VMware snapshots turned on are “application-consistent.” The limitations of this application-consistent backup methodology are explained in the “Application-Consistent Recovery” section of this document.
Note: For VMs running Windows Server 2003 as the guest operating system, the VSS snapshots are application consistent. For VMs running Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista the snapshots are file system consistent. For more information refer to http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_vcb_15_u1_admin_guide.pdf
I'm a bit of a noob on SMVI-VSS relations and I'm confused by this...
Are all SMVI backups indeed "application-consistent" (why the quotes?) - or just that of 2003 VMs running VSS aware applications?
Thanks!
