Simple tip to keep VMware backups organized and reliable

Malcolm

Just sharing a quick tip from my recent VMware work: splitting backup jobs by workload type (DB servers, file servers, app servers, etc.) makes the whole environment much easier to maintain. Incrementals run faster, CBT stays stable, and recovery points are a lot clearer.
I’ve also been testing Vinchin Backup & Recovery lately — adding large clusters and automating jobs is surprisingly smooth. Nice little time-saver for busy days.
Curious if anyone else has simple tricks for keeping VMware backups tidy?

Sylas Beaumont

Totally agree — splitting jobs by workload is a lifesaver. I group DBs (application-aware), file servers (file-level with exclusions), and VMs that can tolerate longer RTOs. Makes restores predictable and SLAs easier to meet.

Marlon

Sylas Beaumont Same. I also apply different retention tiers per group — DBs keep more frequent restores + longer retention than dev VMs.

sarah

Nice callout on CBT stability — when CBT keeps resetting it wrecks incremental performance. We schedule host-level maintenance to avoid snapshot storms and monitor for CBT resets after host upgrades or Storage vMotions.

William

sarah How do you detect CBT resets quickly? Any monitoring checks you use?

sarah

William Watch backup sizes — a sudden full-sized incremental usually means CBT lost. We also poll vCenter tasks and backup job logs and alert on unexpected read volumes.

Felix Drummond

Automate restores! I run nightly smoke restores for one critical DB and one app VM. Catchs backup script/credential problems early before you need them in a crisis.

Vincent

Felix Drummond How heavy are your smoke restores? Full DB or tiny subset?

Felix Drummond

Vincent Mostly a full restore to a sandbox for small DBs, and for large DBs we restore a recent backup with just critical tables + sanity checks. The point is to validate the pipeline, not mirror prod.