Backup at a hypervisor level

Backup at a hypervisor level (also known as agent-less backup) means the ability to back up and recover virtual machines without installing agents into the guest systems. This functionality becomes available by using Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Agent for VMware vSphere ESX(i) or Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Agent for Hyper-V. These agents require a license for Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Virtual Edition to work.

Agents

Agent for VMware vSphere ESX(i) is delivered in two versions:

Agent for ESX(i) (Virtual Appliance) can be imported or deployed to a VMware ESX(i) Server.
For off-loaded backup, Agent for ESX(i) (Windows) can be installed on a machine running Windows.

Agent for Hyper-V needs to be installed directly on a Hyper-V host.

Features and capabilities

Backup at a hypervisor level includes the following main features and capabilities.

Disk-level backup
Backup of entire machines or individual disks or volumes.

A virtual machine can be running, stopped, suspended, or switch between the three states during backup.
Disk-level recovery
Recovery of entire machines or individual disks or volumes to a new or existing virtual machine.

A virtual machine has to be stopped during the recovery to this machine. By default, the software stops the machine automatically.
Cluster support
Backup and recovery of clustered virtual machines.
VMware vMotion/Microsoft Migration support
Uninterrupted backup during migration of the backed up machine. A backup plan is executed no matter which host the machine is running on.
Simultaneous backups of virtual machines
An agent can simultaneously back up as many as 10 virtual machines. The exact number is defined by the user.
Incremental conversion to a virtual machine
An agent can convert a disk-level backup to a virtual machine of the corresponding type: VMware ESX(i) or Microsoft Hyper-V. Conversion of an incremental backup updates the machine instead of creating it from scratch.
Flexible configuration of the agents to handle one or multiple ESX(i) servers
Applies to VMware vSphere only

Protect your virtual environment with as many agents as you want, from one agent for all hosts to one agent for each machine. The management server evenly distributes virtual machines among the agents. Or, you can bind the agents with the machines manually.
Off-load backup with Agent for VMware vSphere ESX(i) (Windows)
Applies to VMware vSphere only

A Windows version of Agent for ESX(i) enables you to off-load backups from a ESX(i) host.
Automatic agent deployment
Applies to VMware vSphere only

Just include virtual machines in a backup plan. The agents will be deployed and configured in the background, if you allowed this when configuring integration with the vCenter Server.
Backup to a locally attached storage
Applies to VMware vSphere only

Add a dedicated virtual disk to Agent for ESX(i) (Virtual Appliance) and do backups directly to this storage, omitting LAN.

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:

Perform a file-level backup and recovery.
Execute pre/post backup or pre/post data capture commands within the guest operating system.
Back up volumes created using Logical Volume Manager (LVM) on virtual machines running Linux.

For more details, please see the following sections: