VCB problems with independent disks
In my RSS reader I noticed a blog on VM/ETC about independent disks and VCB. The thing is, no snapshots are created when a disk is in independent/persistent mode. This can be a problem when you want to use VCB on all your disks. But this can also come in handy when you want to disable a specific disk from being picked up by VCB. For instance a Database server with a 1TB D: disk is probably not a candidate for for VCB in a normal situation. But when setting the D:\ disk in independent/persistent mode this disk will be skipped by VCB because it’s impossible to snapshot a disk that’s in this mode. This way you can dump the C:\ aka System partition and restore the VM in case of disaster recovery more easily.
January 11th, 2008 at 13:45
Duncan,
I never thought about using independent disks to exclude a .vmdk from being backed up. That is actually a pretty cool way to work around this limitation of VCB. Thanks!
January 24th, 2008 at 12:53
Nice tip
May also want to check out this post if you are interested in selective disk backup using VCB:
http://communities.vmware.com/blogs/jturver/2008/01/24/vcb-how-to-backup-a-selected-specific-disk-or-disks-using-vcbexport-and-a-useful-script-to-do-it