PowerProtect Data Manager 19.16 Virtual Machine User Guide

• Crash Consistent—PowerProtect Data Manager takes a snapshot of the virtual asset as it appears in storage at the beginning of the backup to ensure point-in-time protection. This snapshot includes all disks (VMDKs) that are part of the virtual machine backup.
• Application Aware—PowerProtect Data Manager detects supported application workloads inside protected assets and takes application-specific actions, such as quiescing.
• Exclusion—Marks the specified assets as intentionally exempt from data protection operations. Otherwise, assets that are not assigned to any protection policy are reported as unprotected. PowerProtect Data Manager restricts the specified assets from being assigned to other protection policies.

For virtual machines with SQL applications installed, select Application Aware to quiesce the application before performing the SQL database and transaction log backup. When you select this type, you must provide Windows account credentials for the virtual machine. You can provide the credentials at the protection-policy level or the virtual machine asset level. When you provide the credentials at both levels, the virtual machine asset credentials override the policy credentials.

By default, PowerProtect Data Manager automatically performs quiescing for the guest file system on the virtual machine. Quiescing ensures that the data within the guest file system is in a state that is appropriate for backups. If the file system cannot be quiesced on the first attempt, the snapshot and backup are performed without quiescing.

PowerProtect Data Manager uses VMware Tools to quiesce the file system in the guest operating system. The VMware documentation provides more information.