Users Guide

Understanding Backup Types

A Replay Manager backup can be either a Windows VSS backup or a VMware backup.

Windows Backup Types

For Windows applications (Exchange, SQL Server, and Hyper-V), Replay Manager creates backups using the Microsoft Volume Shadow

Copy Services (VSS).

There are two types of VSS backups:

• Copy backup—Backs up all les, including all application and log les on the selected volumes. All information on which les were

changed or deleted is preserved; therefore, copy backups do not aect the sequence of incremental and dierential backups that might

happen independent of the copy backup.

• Full backup—Might truncate transactional log les after the backup nishes depending on the application. Once all transactions from a

log are applied to the database, the database sets a checkpoint (or a marker) to the last committed transaction. Once the checkpoint is

set, the logs that have been applied may be truncated or deleted.

By default, Replay Manager Service for Windows takes VSS copy backups. SQL Server transaction logs are not truncated with either a

copy or full backup.

NOTE: If backing up Exchange data and using a third‐party backup application such as Windows Backup, NetBackup, or

BackupExec, it is important to understand which application handles the transaction logs: Replay Manager, or the third party

backup application. If you currently use any type of incremental schedule within your backup application, remember that the

backup application relies upon the transaction logs to create a successful backup. If Replay Manager is truncating logs in a full

backup, then the transaction logs would not be available to the third party application.