Backing up a running virtual machine (vmware)

[MossyUK]

Hello,

Is this even possible? If I were to put two VMs running on one box into a 'production' environment, would I be able to back them up every night without shutting them down? They would need to be 24x7 servers really, so if i cant back them up, i cant use VM!

Thanks

 

[Rudeboy]

Isn't there a snapshot feature?

I wouldn't want to try a manual backup as this is like an open database. If there's nothing built in then a quick shutdown's probably recommended.

 

[Lucifurr]

Isn't possible to just just backup up the VM as though it were a real machine, rather than trying to backup the Virtual Hard disk as a file of the host system.

We use Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R1 and Veritas and that does havoc with our VMs. If you backup the Virtual Hard disk file when *** VM is running, the file seems to expand like there is no tomorrow. You end up have to compact the Virtual Hrad disk to get it down to size.