Date: FEB 2011
Product & Version: VMware 2.0
OS Version: all
Symptoms:
During vmware image level backups, it is currently impossible to explicitly exclude particular disks during backup.
This means that virtual machines with additional disks (e.g. large vmdks used for databases or large filesystems) will be part of the image backup.
To prevent the additional disks from being backed up, they will have to become independent disks.
1/ Remove all snapshots for the targeted virtual machine you wish to only backup the system disk.
2/ Power it down and use the "Edit Settings" tool to make all disks that you do not want to backup independent.
Note:
- Further snapshots of the system while powered on won't be possible, however, they will be possible while it is powered off.
- Also if you plan to backup these independent disks using the vmware file-level feature of the VMware plugin, the operation will still fail as this method triggers a snapshot.
Explanation:
As independent disks can not have a snapshot taken of them they will not be backed up.
An engineering case is open to enhance the plugin so this procedure is not necessary and the option to exclude disks will be a backup option within the VMware plugin.
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