This section describes how to use a disk-level backup to protect applications running on Windows servers.
This information is valid for both physical and virtual machines, no matter if the virtual machines are backed up at a hypervisor level or from inside a guest OS.
Disk-level backup can potentially protect any VSS-aware application; however, Acronis has tested the protection for the following applications:
Microsoft Exchange Server
Microsoft SQL Server
Active Directory (Active Directory Domain Services)
Microsoft SharePoint
Using a disk backup of an application server
A disk or volume backup stores a disk or a volume file system as a whole. Therefore, it stores all of the information necessary for the operating system to boot. It also stores all application files, including database files. You can use this backup in various ways depending on the situation.
In case of disaster, you can recover the entire disk to ensure that both the operating system and applications are up and running.
If the operating system is intact, you may need to revert an application database to a previous state. To do this, recover the database files and then use the native tools of the application to make the application acknowledge the database.
You may need to extract only a certain data item, for example a PDF document from a Microsoft SharePoint server backup. In this case, you can temporarily mount a backed-up volume to the application server file system and use the native tools of the application to extract the item.