Virtual Machine or Windows Computer?

[Gimbo58]

I don't understand the difference between this two kind o job
If i want to backup the fully computer from Backup & Replication Server, which is the difference between these two choice?

Because with a Virtual Machine I've some problems with external disk insted of Windows Computer that works fine

[Gostev]

Host-based (data captured at the hypervisor level) vs. agent-based (data captures from inside of each machine) backup.
The former is far more efficient, but does not support storage that is not managed by the hypervisor, like external disks.

[PetrM]

Hi Gianni,

There are too many differences but the main one is that "Windows Computer" job does not know about the hypervisor and does not interact with it. The agent works inside the guest OS and fetches data from VSS snapshots of the volumes whose data it wants to process, please refer to this page for more information. The "Virtual Machine" job works at the level of the hypervisor, the Source Data Mover is running on the proxy server and reads data in one of available transport modes. You may take a look at this page for vSphere workflow and this one for Hyper-V.

Agent-based backup for virtual machines should be used due to some host-based processing limitations on hypervisor side, for example RDM virtual disks in physical mode, independent disks on VMware or pass-through disks on Hyper-V.

Speaking about the error retrieved during "Virtual Machine" job, I strongly recommend to ask our support team to investigate the issue. Please share a support case ID with us.

Thanks!