In this IT Briefing, server virtualization expert David Davis describes the pros and cons of and best practices for using virtualization-based backup and replication to protect physical servers. Topics covered include:

• The advantages of using virtualization-based backup and replications to reduce backup time
• Ways to make management easier, including using virtualization-based SANs
• The pros and cons of other approaches, such as backing up various RAID arrays on various servers
• Backup challenges, such as incompatibility between virtualization backup software and existing backup and replication tools