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Your backup strategy depends on how you want to protect your data and recover from problems. There are two main goals.

• Recover individual files on the virtual machine (for example, if a user accidentally removes a file)
• Recover from catastrophic failures in which your entire virtual machine is damaged

VMware ESX Server provides several possible approaches for backing up your data, whether to tape or to another system over the network. You will probably find that a combination of approaches provides the best data protection for your virtual machines.

The next section, Using Tape Drives with VMware ESX Server, describes how to make tape drives available to both your virtual machine and your service console:

• Backing Up from within a Virtual Machine
• Backing Up Virtual Machines from the Service Console
• Using Hardware or Software Disk Snapshots
• Using Network-based Replication Tools