CA ARCserve Backup r16

ARCserve protects your virtual servers

ARCserve r16 now supports host-level backup for VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer. We tested this with Microsoft's Hyper-V and used a Dell PowerEdge R515 server running Windows Server 2008 R2 and the Hyper-V role.

The ARCserve Windows agent must be installed on the Hyper-V host and one agent license includes any number of guest VMs on that system. ARCserve supports snapshot-based backups using the Hyper-V VSS Writer which allows entire VMs to be backed up and restored.

Backing up VMs at this level is simple. During the job creation you browse the server object and select any of its VMs as sources. Running VMs are backed up with child partition snapshots whilst those powered down use the latest saved state.

For file level restoration you must load the ARCserve agent within each VM as well. After populating the ARCserve backup database using the Hyper-V host agent, running VMs with the agent installed also appear in a separate group in the source view where you can select their virtual volumes.

We found the backup process no different to securing physical servers. For restore operations we could select individual files and folders in the VM and return them to their original location or another destination.

ARCserve's new infrastructure virtualisation provides a graphical overview of your entire backup environment