A lot of people have been assuming that VMware’s new Consolidated Backup feature is designed to reduce the number of backup agents required to backup and enterprise. This could be a major cost savings.

Whereas it is true that it would only require 1 agent to backup the environment, you will need more agents if you need to restore. Each virtual machine would require it’s own agent to conduct the restore.

So why use consolidated backup? Consolidated backup reduces the backup window from hours to minutes. Instead of waiting for Gig’s of data to be moved over the network, a snapshot of the virtual disks is taken. Once this is completed, the virtual machine can go on working. The backup is done form the VM’s perspective.

The actual backup can now be done by the backup proxy. The backup proxy has the capability to mount those snapshots and gain file level access. This allows one system to back up all your VM’s at a file level over a variety of backup mediums like fibre channel.

And remember, faster is better…