How to exclude files or folders when you snapshot a VM

[jeffann]

Hello,

I would like to know if it's possible to exclude files or folders when you snapshot a VM.

We want to try to save some space.

We work on Windows environment (2003, 2008 and R2) and vcenter 4.1, Vmware Backup Host and Netbackup 7.

JF,

[Troy_Clavell]

not that I am aware of. A snapshot is just that, a point in time capture of the state of the VM as it is. You cannot exclude anything within that guest OS. Remember a snapshot is a lot different than a backup and should not be used as such.

[DSTAVERT]

How are you using snapshots? It is very important to understand what snapshot are and how to use them. Snapshots in the VMware sense are short term not long term. Create a snapshot, back up the base disk, commit the snapshot. Take a snapshot, perform an OS upgrade, verify the upgrade, roll back if necessary or commit the snapshot if OK. Anything other than this will get you in trouble.

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1015180 Understanding snapshots.

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[jeffann]

I take note of it, thanks for your answer.

Actually, we use the Netbackup Software to backup VM files (vmdk, vmx, ...)

And I would like to know if I can exclude some files or folders from the vmdk file. But, I don't think that is possible.

[Troy_Clavell]

....again, you cannot exclude anything using a snapshot or within the vmdk itself. The backup will be performed on the guest OS, from there you can setup any exclusions.

[DSTAVERT]

Are you taking advantage of the deduplication withing Netbackup?

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[jeffann]

Yes we use deduplication

and, I will start to do some test using Vmware Data Recovery soon.

[DSTAVERT]

If that doesn't do it for you look at splitting your data across multiple VMDKs. Really important and active stuff, less important or less active stuff down to data that must not change, etc. From the client perspective you can re assemble using mount points or DFS in Windows or mount points in other OS's. Easy at that point to treat each VMDK differently.

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[Lakshmi_Gayatri]

This cannot be done directly.Please see if the solutions can get you through.

1. If the files and folders inside the VM need not be backed up then you can move them to a different hard-disk which is marked as independent-persistent. An independent-persistent disk will be ignored by snapshot and hence these files and folders will not get into the snapshot.

2. If you are using VDDK, there is a utility called "vmware-mount" which will help mount individual partitions from virtual disks independently. The filesystem on the partition will be accessible at the mount point specified. So if the VM you want to backup has C:,E:,F: then you can mount them as X:, Y: Z: and then write a script to backup the required files. This does not a need a snapshot which means the backups are not crash-consistent and happens only via LAN mode.

3. If you are using VADP, then you can use VixMntApi to do the file mounts. I am sure NetBackup 7 comes with VADP integration, but not sure if file mounts can be done.