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.
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!
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