How Backup Works

During backup, Veeam Agent for IBM AIX performs the following operations:

1. Veeam Agent for IBM AIX creates a backup file in the target location.
2. In the backup file, Veeam Agent for IBM AIX creates a virtual disk. The disk contains a volume with the ext4 file system.
3. Veeam Agent for IBM AIX reads data that you selected for backup, compresses it and copies it to the target location. As part of the file backup process, Veeam Agent performs the following steps:

1. For each file included in the backup, creates a target file in the volume inside the backup file.
2. Opens the source and target files.
3. Reads data from the source file and transfers it to the target file.
4. Closes the source and target files.

[For incremental backup] To detect files that changed on the Veeam Agent machine since the previous backup session, Veeam Agent reads file metadata and compares last modification time of files in the original location and files in the backup. During incremental backup, Veeam Agent copies only new or modified files to the target location. To learn about full and incremental backup, see Backup Chain.

Veeam Agent for IBM AIX locks backed-up files during the backup process. However, Veeam Agent does not track whether backed-up data changes in the original location since the time when the backup process started. For example, if a new file appears in a directory included in the backup after the backup process starts, Veeam Agent will not copy this file to the target location. To make sure that data in the backup is in the consistent state, it is recommended that you do not perform write operations in the file system that contains the backed-up data until the backup process completes.