Backups in a virtual environment
In this chapter, you've learned how to use snapshots and clones. Because of these features, you don't really need backups in a traditional way (in which a backup program is scheduled to copy files from a filesystem to an offline medium) anymore. If you enable a feature such as autoprotect snapshots, a backup is created automatically every day. There are a few things to consider however, before thinking that you're completely secure when using features such as clones and backups. The most important considerations are listed as follows:
No matter how good your cloning and snapshot strategy is, as long as they are on the same disk as the original virtual machine files, you can hardly consider these virtual machines fully protected. In a good backup scheme, files need to be copied to another medium, and if possible, even to another site.
A clone is just a copy of a virtual machine. The longer back that the clone was created, the less you can consider it a decent...
