Back Up Virtual Machines

If you use a virtual machine (VM) on your Mac computer, you can back it up with Backblaze Computer Backup using the following options:

• Install Computer Backup on a VM (applies only to Windows VMs).
• Back up the VM file itself.
• Share a folder with the VM.

Install Computer Backup on a VM

Start your VM and install Computer Backup in the Windows operating system that is running on your VM. Computer Backup operates as if it were installed on a real Windows computer and backs up data that is located in the VM. For more information about how to install the Backblaze client, click here.

Advantages

• You have a backup for your Windows VM that is separate from your Mac's backup.
• You can browse the actual Windows folder structure and choose the files that you want to restore.
• Your backup includes only the actual files that are within the VM.

Disadvantages

• You must purchase an additional Computer Backup license for the VM because it is treated as a different computer.
• Computer Backup backs up only the data that is on your VM when the VM is open and Windows is running.
• Files that are shared with your Mac computer are not backed up through the VM because the file share is treated like a network location, which Computer Backup does not support.
• If you restore your VM to a prior snapshot, it disrupts Computer Backup.

Back Up a VM File

If you open the Computer Backup settings on your Mac computer, you can configure the exclusions to allow certain file types and file sizes that let the software back up the VM files that are stored on your Mac. You can remove any file type exclusions that prevent Computer Backup from backing up the VM files. If you do not know the file types that are used by your VM, you can clear the entire list of file type exclusions to ensure that your VM files will back up.

Advantages

• You do not need to pay for an extra Computer Backup license.
• Your VM files are backed up even if the VM is not running.

Disadvantages

• Because the VM file itself is backing up, you cannot browse the VM's folder structure when restoring data from your backup. If you want to restore a single file from your VM, you must restore the entire VM, which may include a lot of unnecessary data.
• Because most VMs exist as package files, you must explore the package contents if you want to make sure that you have correctly set up your Computer Backup exclusions.
• Because VMs typically use single, large files, Computer Backup must spend a lot of time backing up this data. Even small changes to the VM can result in overall increased bandwidth usage and disk activity. Backup intervals can also be greater due to the large amount of changing data.
  You may be able to speed up the backup process by splitting the virtual hard disk drives into chunks of one to five gigabytes, if your VM software has this feature.

Share a Folder with a VM

You can share a folder on your Mac computer with your VM. This allows the VM to access files that are saved in the folder. Because this is a normal folder on your Mac computer, the Computer Backup software that is running on your Mac can normally back up the data in this folder.

For more information about how to share a folder with a VM, see the documentation for your VM software:

• VMWare Fusion
• Parallels Desktop
• VirtualBox

Advantages

• You do not need to pay for an extra Computer Backup license.
• Your VM files are backed up even if the VM is not running.
• Backups are faster and more efficient because only the files in the shared folder are backed up; not the entire VM.

Disadvantages

• Only the data that is in the shared folder is backed up; none of the other data that is stored on the VM is backed up.