Limitations

Sometimes, backup at a hypervisor level is not possible because of virtualization product limitations.

• VMware vSphere does not support snapshots of fault tolerant virtual machines, independent disks, and Raw Device Mapping (RDM) disks in physical compatibility mode.
• Microsoft Hyper-V does not provide control over pass-through disks to a host system. As a result, the Microsoft Software Shadow Copy provider cannot provide Agent for Hyper-V with snapshots of pass-through disks.

To overcome these limitations, use backup from inside a guest OS. Using this method, you can also:

• Execute pre/post backup or pre/post data capture commands within the guest operating system.
• Back up individual files and folders of a virtual machine.
• Recover files to a virtual machine's file system.
• Back up a guest system stored on a logical volume to be able to recover the machine to a different platform.
• Use the backup and recovery options that are not effective for backup at a hypervisor level.

For more details, please see the following sections:

• Backing up independent disks and RDMs
• Backing up pass-through disks
• Backing up fault tolerant machines
• Backing up Linux logical volumes and MD devices