Implementing data protection for server virtualization environments can be tricky. Conventional, agent-based, file-level techniques for virtual machine backup could cause problems -- most notably resource contention, which could compromise the performance of all virtual machines running on an ESX or ESXi host.

Data backup vendors are aware of this pitfall and advocate the use of VMware Consolidated Backup for virtual machine-level backup. VMware vSphere offloads backup processing from the VMware server, eliminating the backup window. However, VCB/vStorage API for Data Protection is a framework for backup -- not a backup application. Read this expert presentation transcript with Eric Siebert, IT industry expert and Author of VMwareland.com, to learn more.