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October 26th, 2022 02:00
Avamar 19 register client and proxy backups
Hi guys,
I got some doubts about Avamar virtual edition 19.x and need some clarification.
If Avamar is utilized to backup/restore vCenter datacenter virtual machines, then is it required to install the "avamar client agent" in the guesOS?
I'm afraid that I misunderstood the function of "avamar proxy" and "avamar client agent". As far as i know, the backup/restore tasks are all performed via proxy(through vCenter API) to transfer data to destination. And the "avamar client agent" is just for registration and management(from Avamar server's view).
is it correct?
if the "avamar client agent" is required, does avamar install it automatically to the VMs? or it can only be installed without avamar?(e.g. manually/scripted)
Sandtitz
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April 14th, 2023 04:00
Hello,
Short answer: Avamar clients are not required for backing up VM's. You don't need to install the agent on any VM. The client and proxies do not rely on each other at all, except in a single special case*.
Avamar does not install the client anywhere automatically. Avamar Client is an MSI package you can script for automated deployment.
The client would only be absolutely necessary for backing up physical computers (laptop, workstations, bare metal servers) or if you have not licensed the virtualisation hosts for Avamar.
The client may be necessary if you are backing up databases because the VM snapshot can interfere with the VM operations, and/or the backed up data may not be 100% consistent. With the client + appropriate DB plugin you can also backup/restore straight to/from database without using SQL dumps.
If your VM's are using RDM disks - used with Windows clustering for example - the RDM's couldn't be backed up with proxies anyway, you'd need to use the client.
*There is an Advanced Policy option to orchestrate the VM backups together with SQL backups so that you would always get application-consistent backups.