VSA Proxy Backups

Hi Terry,

As you state, there’s no real need to backup a dedicated VSA Proxy machine.

Per our VMware Backup documentation:

• If you have deployed MediaAgents or VSA proxies on virtual machines, filter those virtual machines from VSA backups. (If you need to protect files on those virtual machines, install in-guest agents on those virtual machine to perform file backups.)

Source: https://documentation.commvault.com/2024e/expert/adding_subclient_content_for_vmware.html

You can backup a VSA Proxy (VM) if you wish, but please consider the following:

Backing up a VSA proxy during backup operations of other guest VM’s can cause issues with backups, such as issues releasing disks (if using HotAdd Transport). Therefore it would be best to schedule the VSA Proxy backup outside of usual backup window to avoid this.

It’s generally not recommended for a VSA Proxy to backup itself. - If you have multiple VSA proxies, you can use a VSA proxy to back up other VSA proxies.

If the VSA Proxy is a physical machine, you could of course leverage the FileSystem Agent.

With regards to protection frequency, this depends on your requirements. - From the software side there is not much change on the machine since the IndexCache and DeduplicationDB would be on the Media Agent.
I would suspect a less-frequent backup (weekly) would likely be sufficient.

Hope this helps.

Best Regards,
Michael