Snapshot strategy

[kaplan71]

Hi there --

I have successfully deployed a virtual machine, and I am working on an effective backup strategy. The virtual machine does have a backup
agent installed, and it is part of an image as well as incremental backup. I have not yet made use of the snapshot utility, and I wanted to
find out what is the best way to incorporate it.

One idea that I had was to take the snapshot once a week, and have that as part of the image backup. To that end, I had several questions:

1. Can the snapshots be scheduled to run automatically? If so, how is that done?
2. What is the default location of the snapshot file, and if necessary, can the location be changed to a different folder?

Thanks.

[Perryg]

Snapshots are not backups and in fact hinder the restoration process (IMHO).
Without snapshots all you need to do is restore. With snapshots you must restore the base image and all snapshots in the chain as well as all control files.
Heaven help you if one of those are missing, outdated, or corrupt.
My actual backup routine is to backup the *.VDI from the host and replace it as needed. As for snapshots, I use them when attempting things that could break the guest, but delete them after I am sure everything is as it should be.

[kaplan71]

Hi there --

Thanks for your reply. Based on what you said, as long as the VDI file is part of the image and incremental backups that are already
in place, then I have all bases covered, and it is not necessary to incorporate snapshots as part of my strategy.

Correct?

[Perryg]

Like I said snapshots make the backup a mess to restore.
Use of snapshots has their place but I see many that use them only to find out that they could not restore because of them.
As for incremental backups within the guest use those as you will, but the main thing to do is keep a valid backup of the Virtual HDD (*.VDI)