VCB image-level backup and data consistency

[michigun]

Hi.

I can not find information about it:

If we do file level backup Windows-VM, the VMware tools run sync driver, that drop all guest OS buffers; and all data in vmdk are consistency. Am I right?

If we doing VCB image-level backup Linux-VM - have the VMware tools sync driver for Linux? Are data in vmdk consistency?

[admin · Accepted solution]

No, image level backups are 'crash consistent', i.e. as if the server has been hard rebooted by a power cycle. So if you want DBs etc to be guaranteed consistent you need to stop the DB service before backup. (Only for the snapshot creation pre-VMDK export, you can restart the DB as soon as the snapshot is in place).

[michigun]

Thank you.