How do guest timestamps affect vmware server backups

[tcritser]

In our environment we are using Veeam B & R v6 to backup our VMware servers. We have one particular server that has an important file on it that changes daily but the date modified time stamp does not change. This is a server 2008 guest. We were wondering how Veeam Backup looks at this file. Does this file get ignored because the timestamp doesn't change? We are doing direct SAN access reverse incrementals with CBT turned on.

I would assume that because the virtual disk is being backed up and not the Windows Files system that the timestamp wouldn't matter, because the blocks are still changing. But this does leave us concerned and wondering if we should just set this job as a Full Backup each night.

[Andreas Neufert]

Hi,

Veeam Backup & Replication work on the block level. So any (block) change in a datastore is backed up. (Only changed blocks)

Timestamps or change times of the files work on a much higher file system level. Veeam doesn´t see this and takes no care about that things.

In case of VMware change block tracking. VMware knows which block on the storage are changed and Veeam read out only this storage blocks and store them (deduplicated and compressed) in it's backup files.


Levels: (simplified)
- Userinterface
- Files (incl. Timestamps)
- Filesystemdriver
- SCSI commands (+ VMware Change block tracking)
- stored blocks