Application-aware backups capture the state of application data at the time of the backup, including data in memory and pending transactions, making it easier to restore the application for continued use. An application-aware backup for a virtual machine quiesces the application, flushes its memory, and completes pending writes, then creates a software snapshot of application data. After the software snapshot is created, the application resumes.
The application-aware backup includes two parts:
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Virtual Server Agent (VSA) backup: The VSA backup of the virtual machine can be a streaming backup or IntelliSnap backup.
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Application backup: The application backup is triggered automatically by the VSA backup. The backup of application data always uses IntelliSnap, even if the VSA backup is a streaming backup.
To review summary information for application-aware backup jobs, you can download the Application Jobs Per VSA AppAware Job custom report from the Commvault Store.
Guest OS Support
You can perform application-aware backup operations for Windows VMs.
You can also perform application-aware backups for Linux VMs that run Oracle. This option is available only for hypervisors that support Linux proxies.