The Backup Exec Management Plug-in for VMware is used in conjunction with Backup Exec 2010 R3 and the Agent for VMware Virtual Infrastructure and allows VMware administrators to view and perform basic management tasks for backup operations on selected virtual machines.

Symantec has added new functionality to the Plug-in that works in combination with VMware Workstation to mount a Backup Exec Backup-to-Disk Folder or Deduplication Storage Folder to power on a protected virtual machine directly from the backup destination, keeping the powered on virtual machine separate from the production network. This enables VMware and Backup Exec administrators to easily validate the recoverability of full virtual machine backups via the vSphere client console.

Virtual Machine Validator tests full virtual machine backups by booting the virtual machine backup in a separate and specialized recovery environment, thereby ensuring backups are recoverable every time. Recoverability reports are available to instantly view the results of these tests for every protected virtual machine. This feature will allow the administrators to validate and document that a protected virtual machine is recoverable and that a restore operation will result in a function virtual machine.

 

Predictive Recovery for VMware Guest Virtual Machines

 

VMware vSphere has become widely adopted in organizations looking to virtualize their IT environments to save cost. As a result a larger numbers of systems are being virtualized, companies are looking for ever more efficient backup and quicker recovery of their virtual systems to maintain business productivity and cost savings that server virtualization delivers. This includes not only the guest virtual machines, but also the applications that have also been installed on those guest virtual machines such as Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server, and Active Directory. A lost VMware server could impact productivity up to several hours, or even days, for multiple departments while the IT administrator struggles to recover the virtual environment and the individual guest virtual machines. 

Administrators looking to protect their VMware environment clearly understand the frustration and time involved with backup technology that was not built specifically for protecting virtual environments. Administrators and companies who have not had to experience recovering a guest virtual machine using basic backup and recovery tools will face several limitations in quickly recovering their data with these older backup tools designed only for physical systems.

Symantec has added functionality to Backup Exec 2010 R3 to support of the latest release from VMware – vSphere 5.0. To obtain support for VMware vSphere 5.0 you must download and install the following: