VMware networks can become very large very quickly. The ability to add so many different servers on the same hardware almost creates a need to do it. Security can be improvised, new web servers can be added almost instantly and network resources can be exploited to their maximum benefit. The more complex this network becomes, the more a good VMware backup product becomes necessary. The amount of data that may need to be backed up alone can make this a very time-consuming task. It can also make it difficult to restore servers when they fail.

VMware backup products don’t have to be restricted to one or two backup streams. In fact, they can use many more streams than that, allowing for the simultaneous backup of several different servers. This doesn’t require additional hardware, either. Suitably enough, this can be done on virtual hardware, just as VMware can provide a virtual server to your organization. Using these technologies, the backup process can be done very quickly and efficiently, without overtaxing the network while it’s being done. Restoration can be done block by block or over the entire system. This sort of control allows for much faster and more efficient backup operations.

If you’re restoring a VMware backup from a legacy device, speed is usually even more of a concern. The newer products on the market, however, can restore from tape in one pass, making it a much shorter process to restore any one of your servers. Depending upon the product used, restoring the server may or may not require you to use proprietary software. If it does, this is usually a disadvantage. The files for virtual servers can be stored in forms that allow them to be restored without the use of any proprietary software at all.

All of these factors can make a VMware backup go much faster. If you need to, the good products can restore the major server operating systems file by file, which means that you don’t have to worry about issues of compatibility in this regard. The elimination of proprietary software for the restoration operation also means that viruses and other vulnerabilities are never issues. Because the backups are stored in a format that is not dependent upon the operating system or any other software to be restored, it is always available, no matter how long after being backed up it is accessed.