vSphere Data Protection (VDP) is a robust, simple-to-deploy, disk-based backup and recovery solution. vSphere Data Protection is fully integrated with VMware vCenter Server and enables centralized and efficient management of backup jobs while storing backups in deduplicated destination storage.
The benefits of vSphere Data Protection are:
- Provides fast and efficient data protection for all of your virtual machines, even those powered off or moved between physical hosts.
- Significantly reduces disk space consumed by backup data using smart deduplication across all backups.
- Reduces the cost of backing up virtual machines and minimizes the backup window using change block tracking and VMware virtual machine snapshots.
- Allows for easy backups without the need for third-party agents installed in each virtual machine.
- Uses a simple straight-forward installation as an integrated component within vSphere, that can be managed by a web portal.
- Direct access to vSphere Data Protection configuration integrated into the standard vSphere Web Client.
- Protects backups with checkpoint and rollback mechanisms.
- Provides simplified recovery of Windows and Linux files with end-user initiated file level recoveries from a web-based interface.
The VMware vSphere Web Client interface is used to select, schedule, configure, and manage backups and recoveries of virtual machines. During a backup, vSphere Data Protection creates a quiesced snapshot of the virtual machine. Deduplication is automatically performed with every backup operation.
The following terms are used throughout this document in the context of backup and recovery.
- A datastore is a virtual representation of a combination of underlying physical storage resources in the datacenter.
- A datastore is the storage location (for example, a physical disk, a RAID, or a SAN) for virtual machine files.
- Changed Block Tracking (CBT) is a VMkernel feature that keeps track of the storage blocks of virtual machines as they change over time. The VMkernel keeps track of block changes on virtual machines, which enhances the backup process for applications that have been developed to take advantage of VMware’s vStorage APIs.
- VMware vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP) enables backup software to perform centralized VM backups without the disruption and overhead of running backup tasks from inside each virtual machine.
- Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK) is a file or set of files that appears as a physical disk drive to a guest operating system. These files can be on the host machine or on a remote file system.
- The vSphere Data Protection appliance is a purpose built virtual appliance for vSphere data protection.
vSphere Data Protection Advanced (VDP Advanced) – Is a new standalone product sold separately from vSphere – It extends the capabilities of VDP with greater scalability and integration with business-critical applications to protect midsize vSphere environments. VDP Advanced provides fast agent-less image-level backups, as well as guest-level application-consistent protection of Microsoft® SQL Server™ and Microsoft® Exchange Server™.
