The best way to verify backup data integrity is to routinely perform restores from this backup data. For a variety of reasons, the majority of administrators do not verify backups using this method very often (if ever). Wouldn’t it be great if a backup and recovery solution provided the option to do this automatically on a regular schedule? Wouldn’t it be even better if the solution reported the results of the verification exercise? I am happy to report that is one of the new features of vSphere Data Protection (VDP) Advanced 5.5! Keep reading for more information and to download a short white paper on the topic that includes best practices…
VDP Advanced Automated Backup Verification is basically a recurring virtual machine (VM) restore job. The process of verification looks like this:
Restore the selected virtual machine using the most recent restore point (disconnected from network)
Verify VM guest OS booted by checking for VMware Tools heartbeats
Optionally, run a script for further verification
Power off and delete restored VM once verification is complete
As with nearly all tasks in VDP Advanced, the process of creating an Automated Backup Verification job is simple, as shown in this short video (1 minute 15 seconds):
Results of an Automated Backup Verification job can be found on the Reports tab of the VDP Advanced user interface. This information also shows up in the VDP Advanced email reports.
A verification job can be scheduled to run daily, weekly, or monthly. Only one VM per job can be selected, but it is possible to create multiple verification jobs. VMware Tools must be installed in the protected VM at the time the VM is backed up for this verification process to work properly. For more details including recommendations and best practices, please see the document below.
