VMware Data Recovery 1.2 Linux file level restore client

Latest VMware Data Recovery release 1.2 brought file level restore capability (aka FLR) for Linux VMs. Windows FLR client has been officially supported since 1.1, see my previous blog post about it. I did a quick review of using Linux FLR on CentOS Linux.

VMware Data Recovery 1.2 documentation says that Linux FLR client [...]

VMware Data Recovery, file level restores

VMware Data Recovery (VDR) backup solution has support for file level restore, or FLR as VMware calls it in context of VDR product. Even though FLR is still experimental feature it hasn’t failed me yet. FLR is currently available only for Windows XP, Vista, 2003 and 2008 virtual machines, there is no word about Linux support but it is most likely coming.

To use FLR functionality you need command line FLR client on Windows VM protected by VDR appliance. FLR client is just a single executable vdrFileRestore.exe which is available at same download page you got VDR appliance from.

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vSphere Fault Tolerance, what you should know

With vSphere VMware introduced to us their new high availability feature “Fault Tolerance” (FT from now on). In short FT is to memory state of server what RAID-1 is to disks storage data, FT mirrors copy of the virtual machine CPU and memory state to another hardware. FT runs an exact copy of protected virtual machine in other ESX host, if primary host fails mirrored copy of server takes over in matter of seconds and execution of virtual machine continues uninterrupted, while behind the scenes new ESX host is starting mirroring VM from new primary node.

Sounds great? It is, for some applications.

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