VMware ESXi, a core component of the vSphere Virtualization Suite, is installed as a bare-metal hypervisor directly on the physical server, allowing users to directly access and control the underlying hardware resources. This architecture enables a single physical host to run multiple virtual machines, providing organizations with a flexible virtualized environment. To ensure data security and business continuity in a virtualized environment, virtual machine backups are critical. Unlike regular file backups, VMware ESXi backups have their own unique strategies and methods.
There are two main common methods used in the backup process of VMware ESXi: image-based backup and file-based backup. Image-based backup is a more comprehensive backup method because it backs up the virtual machine in its entirety, including the operating system, configuration files, and all data on the virtual disks. File-based backups are usually performed by installing an agent inside the virtual machine to perform file backups, which is applicable to some scenarios but does not fully cover the entire virtual environment. Therefore, in order to ensure the integrity and security of virtual machine data, image-based backup is usually considered a better choice.