Disk 1
MBR
LDM
database
1 MB
Disk 2
Protective
MBR
GPT
Microsoft
Reserved
Partition (MSR)
LDM
database
GPT
LDM Metadata
partition
1 MB
An application that performs backup and recovery of the virtual machines and enables other management operations on the VMware ESX(i) infrastructure such as task management and operations with available backups, machines, etc.
Acronis Backup for VMware includes the Agent for backing up virtual machines residing on a VMware ESX(i) virtualization server which the Agent is connected to. There could be several ESX(i) hosts or a vCenter managed by one Agent. The best practice is to register vCenter on the Agent instead of specific ESX(i) hosts which are managed by this vCenter. Otherwise, vMotion will not be supported.
The Agent component can be either Windows-based, i.e. installed on a Windows platform, or Appliance-based, i.e. running on a special virtual machine on an ESX(i) host.
A new generation of the archive format which may contain several backups from different virtual machines inside. All backups are saved to this archive in incremental mode. Physically all data is located inside one file as opposed to Legacy mode archive format where each backup is stored in a separate TIB file. Here is the description of how the backups rotation is performed inside the Always Incremental archive:
When one backup becomes expired according to the pre-defined retention rules (which say for example to “delete all backups older than 5 days”), the program marks the old blocks which belong to the expired backup as “free” ones. The blocks of the expired backup which have any dependencies (they may be used in newer backups due to incremental backup technology) are not marked as “free” to ensure the archive consistency. The archive will still be taking the same space on the storage as before. However, newer backups saved into this archive will first write data to the “free” blocks and will increase the total size of the archive only when all the “free” blocks are used.
This approach allows us to keep the archive size as small as possible and prevents it from growing indefinitely.
See Backup archive.
The result of a single backup operation as a single recovery point inside archive. Physically, it is a file that contains a copy of the backed up data (virtual machine volumes) from specific date and time for a specific virtual machine. Backup files created by Acronis Backup for VMware have a TIB extension. One backup file may include useful data from multiple machines plus necessary metadata inside.
A set of backups created and managed by a backup task. An archive in Legacy mode format can contain multiple full backups as well as incremental and differential backups. An archive of Always Incremental format can contain only incremental backups (the first backup will always be a full one). Backups belonging to the same archive are always stored in the same location. Multiple backup tasks can back up the same source data to the same archive, but a basic scenario is “one task – one archive”.
Backups in an archive are managed by the backup task. Manual operations with archives (validation, viewing contents, mounting and deleting backups) should be performed only using Acronis Backup for VMware. Do not modify your archives/backups using non-Acronis tools such as Windows Explorer or third-party file managers.
An operation that creates a copy of the data that exists on a machine's hard disk for the purpose of recovering or reverting the data to a specified date and time.
Configuration parameters of a backup operation, such as archive protection, source files exclusion or data compression level. Backup options are a part of a backup task.
A part of the backup task that includes the backup schedule, [optionally] the retention rules, and the cleanup schedule. For example: perform full backup monthly on the last day of the month at 10:00AM and incremental backup on Sundays at 10:00PM (for old generation format archive). Delete backups that are older than 3 months. Check for such backups every time the backup operation is completed. If the backup is performed in Always Incremental mode, then there is no need to define it's type, i.e. Full or Incremental.
Acronis Backup for VMware provides the ability to use well-known optimized backup schemes, such as GFS, to create a custom backup scheme or to back up data once.
A set of rules that specify how the given virtual machine or a set of virtual machines will be protected. A backup task specifies:
For example, a backup task can contain the following information:
Physically, a backup task is a set of pre-defined actions configured for execution on the Agent side in accordance with the specified parameters (Backup Options).
A bootable rescue utility that includes the backup functionality of the Acronis Backup for VMware Agent. It's typically for P2V migration. Bootable agent is based on Linux kernel. A machine can be booted into a bootable agent using the bootable media. Operations can be configured and controlled only locally through the GUI.
A physical media (CD, DVD, USB flash drive or other media supported by a machine BIOS as a boot device) that contains the bootable agent.
Bootable media in Acronis Backup for VMware is used to back up a physical machine in order to perform P2V migration.
A feature of VMware ESX(i) which allows to identify which blocks of the virtual disks have changed and to transfer only those blocks during the backup/replication process. For example when using CBT technology, the incremental backup speed can increase up to 20 times.
Deleting backups from a backup archive in order to get rid of outdated backups or prevent the archive from exceeding the desired size.
Cleanup consists of applying to an archive the retention rules set by the backup task that produces the archive. This operation checks if the archive has exceeded its maximum size and/or for expired backups. This may or may not result in deleting backups depending on whether the retention rules are violated or not.
For more information please refer to the User Guide.
The console is the web-based user interface provided by the Acronis Backup for VMware Agent in order to access the product functionality. This interface is accessible from any supported Internet browser after you go to specified URL, for example https://192.168.0.23:9876/, where 192.168.0.23 is the IP address of Acronis Backup for VMware Agent and 9876 is the port. Using the direct web-based console-agent connection, the administrator performs direct management.
A logical container that holds virtual machine files and other files necessary for operations with virtual machine. Datastores can exist on different types of physical storage, including local storage, iSCSI, Fibre Channel SAN, or NFS. A datastore can be VMFS-based or NFS-based.
A method of storing different duplicates of the same information only once.
Acronis Backup for VMware can apply the deduplication technology to any backup archives of both Legacy mode and Always Incremental archive formats. This minimizes the storage space taken by the archives, backup traffic and network usage during the backup.
Deduplication in Acronis Backup for VMware is managing data within only one backup archive. For example if the backups are saved into 2 different archives (even if they are in the same location) then there will be no relations between these archives and they may contain duplicated data.
A differential backup stores changes to the data against the latest full backup. You need access to the corresponding full backup to recover the data from a differential backup.
Any management operation that is performed on the Agent using the console-agent connection.
A number of dynamic disks that store the common configuration data in their Logical Disk Manager (LDM) databases and therefore can be managed as a whole. Normally, all dynamic disks created within the same machine are members of the same disk group.
As soon as the first dynamic disk is created by the LDM or another disk management tool, the disk group name can be found in the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\dmio\Boot Info\Primary Disk Group\Name.
The next created or imported disks are added to the same disk group. The group exists until there is at least one of its members. Once the last dynamic disk is disconnected or converted to basic, the group is discontinued, though its name is kept in the above registry key. In case a dynamic disk is created or connected again, a disk group with an incremental name is created.
When moved to another machine, a disk group is considered as ‘foreign’ and cannot be used until imported into the existing disk group. The import updates the configuration data on both the local and the foreign disks so that they form a single entity. A foreign group is imported as is (will have the original name) if no disk group exists on the machine.
For more information about disk groups, please refer to the following Microsoft knowledge base article:
222189 Description of Disk Groups in Windows Disk Management http://support.microsoft.com/kb/222189/EN-US/.
A VMware vCenter specific feature which allows automatic load balancing of a ESX(i) cluster using vMotion.
A hard disk managed by Logical Disk Manager (LDM) that is available in Windows starting with Windows 2000. LDM helps flexibly allocate volumes on a storage device for better fault tolerance, better performance or larger volume size.
A dynamic disk can use either the master boot record (MBR) or GUID partition table (GPT) partition style. In addition to MBR or GPT, each dynamic disk has a hidden database where the LDM stores the dynamic volumes' configuration. Each dynamic disk holds the complete information about all dynamic volumes existing in the disk group which makes for better storage reliability. The database occupies the last 1MB of an MBR disk. On a GPT disk, Windows creates the dedicated LDM Metadata partition, taking space from the Microsoft Reserved Partition (MSR).
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Dynamic disks organized on MBR (Disk 1) and GPT (Disk 2) disks.
For more information about dynamic disks please refer to the following Microsoft knowledge base articles:
Disk Management (Windows XP Professional Resource Kit) http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457110.aspx.
816307 Best practices for using dynamic disks on Windows Server 2003-based computers http://support.microsoft.com/kb/816307.
Any volume located on dynamic disks, or more precisely, on a disk group. Dynamic volumes can span multiple disks. Dynamic volumes are usually configured depending on the desired goal:
When backing up virtual machines which contain dynamic disks inside, Acronis Backup for VMware backs up the logical dynamic volumes instead of the entire dynamic disks structure.
A backup archive encrypted according to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). When the encryption option and a password for the archive are set in the backup options, each backup belonging to the archive is encrypted by the agent before saving the backup to its destination.
The AES cryptographic algorithm operates in the Cipher-block chaining (CBC) mode and uses a randomly generated key with a user-defined size of 128, 192 or 256 bits. The encryption key is then encrypted with AES-256 using a SHA-256 hash of the password as a key. The password itself is not stored anywhere on the disk or in the backup file; the password hash is used for verification purposes. With this two-level security, the backup data is protected from any unauthorized access, but recovering a lost password is not possible.
A self-sufficient backup containing all data selected for backup. To recover the data from a full backup, access to any other backup is not needed.
A popular backup scheme aimed at maintaining the optimal balance between a backup archive size and the number of recovery points available from the archive. GFS enables recovering with daily resolution for the last several days, weekly resolution for the last several weeks and monthly resolution for any time in the past.
For more information please refer to GFS backup scheme.
VMware vCenter specific feature which, in case of cluster hardware failure, allows to automatically restart the virtual servers on another host in the cluster.
A backup that stores changes to the data against the latest backup. You need access to other backups from the same archive to restore data from an incremental backup.
See Backup archive.
A virtual computer uniquely identified by an operating system installation.
A dedicated tool for creating bootable media.
Migration of physical machine to virtual environment. Typically P2V process includes the following steps:
Date and time to which the backed up data can be reverted.
A virtual machine managed by Acronis Backup for VMware Agent. All virtual machines which reside on the registered ESX(i) host or vCenter are automatically registered and can be managed by Acronis Backup for VMware Agent.
A process of replicating the virtual machine to new location (new datastore and/or resource pool). As the result of this process there will be a duplicate virtual machine created which is running independently from the original one.
A VMware term describing the concepts of resource management in an ESX(i) virtualized environment. A resource pool provides a way to divide the resources of a stand-alone ESX(i) host or an ESX(i) cluster into smaller pools. A resource pool is configured with a set of CPU and memory resources that the virtual machines that run in the resource pool share. Resource pools are self-contained and isolated from other resource pools.
One can combine multiple physical servers into a single resource pool that aggregates CPU and memory capacity.
Virtual machines execute in, and draw their resources from, resource pools. This arrangement allows virtual machine workloads to continuously balance across resource pools. When the workload increases, the vCenter Server automatically allocates additional resources and transparently migrates virtual machines between hosts in the resource pool.
VMware vCenter specific feature which allows moving a running virtual machine from one storage device to another.
In Acronis Backup for VMware, a task is a sequence of actions to be performed on a registered machine at a certain time or when a certain event occurs. The actions are described in an xml script file. The start condition (schedule) exists in the protected registry keys (for Windows-based Agent) or in protected files (for Appliance-based Agent).
The Acronis proprietary technology that helps boot up Windows on dissimilar hardware or a virtual machine. The Universal Restore handles differences in devices that are critical for the operating system start-up, such as storage controllers, motherboard or chipset.
In Acronis Backup for VMware the Universal Restore technology is primarily used for P2V migration scenarios.
Universal Restore is not available when recovering Linux.
An operation that checks the possibility of data recovery from a backup.
Validation of a virtual machine backup calculates a checksum for every data block saved in the backup. This procedure is resource-intensive.
While the successful validation means a high probability of successful recovery, it does not check all factors that influence the recovery process. If you back up the operating system, only a test recovery to new/existing virtual machine or running virtual machine from the backup can guarantee successful recovery in the future.
A part of the backup task. Rules that define when and how often to perform validation and whether to validate the entire archive or the latest backup in the archive.
A group of virtual machines that can be managed as a single object. vApps simplify management of complex, multi-tiered applications that run on multiple interdependent virtual machines. vApps have the same basic operations as virtual machines and resource pools. With vApps, you can set the order in which the virtual machines in the vApp power on, automatically assign IP addresses to virtual machines in the vApp, and provide application-level customization.
In terms of Acronis Backup for VMware product the “vApp” is considered to be a container for VMs. This container has its own properties which are included into the backup and are restored along with vApp once some parts of it (or entire vApp) are restored.
VMware vCenter Server, formerly VMware VirtualCenter, centrally manages VMware vSphere environments allowing IT administrators dramatically improved control over the virtual environment compared to other management platforms.
See more details at http://vmware.com/products/vcenter-server/.
In terms of Acronis Backup for VMware product the “vCenter” item is considered to be a container for the ESX(i) virtual infrastructure including datacenters, ESX(i) hosts, etc.
A VMware vCenter specific feature which allows the migration of operational guest virtual machines between similar but separate hardware hosts sharing the same storage. Each of these transitions is completely transparent to any users on the virtual machine at the time it is being migrated.