Virtual Machine Backup and Restore

Virtual machines should be backed up in accordance to environmental backup procedures. Generally, there are two ways of backing up the virtual machines:

• Full virtual machine backups – Take up significant amounts of space, however they are easily restored to the exact state that the virtual machine was at when the backup took place.
• In-guest backups – Use less space, however they are more difficult to backup and restore because the underlying operating system and complete system environment must be restored prior to recovery in many cases.