Article Number: 000143314
Dell PowerEdge: How to backup a Virtual Disk?
Summary: The virtual disk will be represented by a partition, and this partition can be saved using backup tools.
Article Content
Symptoms
Note: This article is part of the Server Tutorials: "Raid and Disks" available here .
Definitions
It is important to define what is a disk group and a virtual disk.- Disk Group
A set of physical disks that are logically grouped and assigned a RAID level. Every disk group provides the overall capacity required to create one or more virtual disks.
- Virtual Disk
A logical component created to enable hosts to access storage on the storage array. A virtual disk is created from the capacity available on a disk group and appears as one logical component even though it is created from more than one physical disk.
In a PowerEdge Controller (PERC) virtual disk can be created. What are the steps to backup this VD.
Example: 1 Virtual Disk in Raid-5 mode composed by 3 disk of 600GB.
Note: The max size of this VD will be 1200GB under the operating system.
This is not possible to directly backup at the Virtual Disk level. Backup data means to do a backup at the Operating System level. The virtual disk will be represented by a partition, and this partition can be saved using backup tools.
Dell offers many solutions to backup data according to the needs. Backups can be done from file level to bare metal restore level.
In this example, assuming Windows Server is running on the PowerEdge, you can use the Windows Server Backup tool to create an image backup. If there is a need to restore the data, you will be able to restore the full image on the virtual disk.
Cause
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Resolution
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Article Properties
Affected Product
PowerEdge
Last Published Date
14 Oct 2021
Version
5
Article Type
Solution