VMware Cloud Community
Mohamedelkeeb
Contributor
Contributor

snapshot VS windows backup

Hello all

I have a windows server 2008 R2 installed in VM and I will install application on it.

I have backup from my application, now I need to take a snapshot in this moment to use it if my windows goes down.( fresh windows ).

My question

Is snapshot will be fine when windows goes down or I must to use windows backup ?

Note: - I will create backup my application daily out this VM,

         - I need to take one snapshot only. 

Thanks

5 Replies
LucD
Leadership
Leadership

As you could have guessed, the answer is "it depends".
Depending on the reason why the guest OS in your VM goes down, a snapshot could be/or not be a valid source to start from.

On the other hand, a snapshot is NOT a backup.

My advice, take a backup from a stable situation, to restore from.

When you want to try a (small) change in the guest OS, a snapshot is a valid and easy go-back solution.


Blog: lucd.info  Twitter: @LucD22  Co-author PowerCLI Reference

sachu2017
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

A snapshot used to restore a VM to a particular point of time when failure occurred

So if you want to restore VM you should have backup of that VM with any available backup tools.

frostyk
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

In addition to what everyone else has said, you should not run a VM with a snapshot for a long period of time.  Keep in mind that a snapshot locks your base VMDKs and starts writing to a delta disk.  That delta disk will continue to grow in size as the VM changes since the snapshot was taken.  As a rule of thumb I like to keep snapshots for a maximum of 1 week.

I have had some customers that get their VM to a good state ...and then often break them.  What I've done for VMs like this in the past is when the VM is in a good baseline state, I clone it to a template.  This way when they break the VM I can delete it and deploy a new one from the template.  Of course if your windows machine is joined to a domain its going to lose domain trust relationship, so you need to have a local account to log in to it and do a domain dejoin/rejoin (or dejoin the template and then rejoin whenever you deploy from it).

As always there are multiple ways to skin a cat and this method might not work for your situation.  Like Luc said, it depends.

Also, not powershell related.

Mohamedelkeeb
Contributor
Contributor

Thank you all for your replay.

Now the best way to take a full backup (fresh installation) use " VM template ".

Is that Ok?

and as I told before I take backup from my app every hour.

Thanks

Reply
0 Kudos
frostyk
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I wouldn't call a template a backup.  It's more of a known good baseline image.

I don't know what your app is that's doing backups and where it stores it.  If your app is making a backup and storing it on the VM, those back ups won't be there when you deploy a new VM from the template.  If your app is a full backup program that backs up the entire VM and stores it outside of the VM, then you can just make sure you keep a restore point of the entire VM in your backup app.

A real backup solution would be an application like Veeam or NetBackup that backs up an entire VM and stores it to some other storage.  Templates, snapshots, and in VM backups are all just workarounds that might work depending on your situation.

Reply
0 Kudos