Introducing the Agent › How the Agent Protects VMware Systems › How the Agent Protects Virtual Machines that Reside on Local Storage and SANs

How the Agent Protects Virtual Machines that Reside on Local Storage and SANs

The Arcserve Backup Agent for Virtual Machines lets you protect VMware-based data that resides on local storage and on a storage area network (SAN). For all data store types, the VMs must be accessible from the backup proxy system.

The following list describes the environment configuration requirements for each of the data store types:

• SAN, iSCSI Data Stores--The backup proxy system must be attached to the same disk where the VM resides and must be attached using the same SAN, iSCSI infrastructure.
• Local Storage Data Stores--The VMs must reside on disks that are attached directly to the VMware ESX Host system. With local storage environments, the backup proxy system should be able to communicate with the VMware ESX Host system via the LAN.

Note: The terms SAN/iSCSI are used to denote shared storage between Proxy and VMware ESX Host systems. Wherever SAN is mentioned is also applicable to iSCSI environments where Disks are shared using iSCSI infrastructure.