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Locked How to backup VMs held on CSV?

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      Thursday, July 09, 2009 3:01 PM
       
       
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      In Win 2008 R2 RC, Windows Server Backup tells you it can't back up CSVs. DPM won't be able to backup CSVs until DPM v3, which probably will only be in beta by the time R2 reaches general availability. As far as I know, no third party backup vendor has announced support for CSVs. So am I right in thinking that the *only* supported way, as of RTM/GA of R2, of backing up VMs held on CSVs is to save state or shut down, then export them?

      It's a real shame that the improved Windows Server Backup can't do CSV. I don't suppose there's a cat's chance in a supernova that it will have CSV support at RTM?
         

      Answers

      • Friday, July 10, 2009 5:19 AM
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        The primary methods used  for Backup/Restore for CSV/Hyper-V are:

        Guest or VM based backup
        Guest based backup is when application data or volumes used by the Virtual Machine are backed up from within the guest VM. The Backup/Restore application is installed in the Virtual Machine as if it were a physical server and backup operations are managed from the VM. Some Enterprise-class Backup/Restore applications utilize a central “management server” and backup-agents are installed on each VM and/or server. Whether using a single-server or an Enterprise backup product, VM based backup is a commonly used method for backing up application data in a Hyper-V environment. In the Guest-based approach, the individual Virtual Machines are managed for backup/restore in the same manner as is done for a group of physical servers. This means the backup/restore software you are using for your servers today should work seamlessly in a Hyper-V/CSV environment. Perform a backup from within the guest operating system before you perform a full backup of the server running Hyper-V.

        Backup from the Hyper-V Parent partition
        Host based backup is when the Virtual Machine(s) configuration and state along with any associated VHD’s are backed up from the Host or parent partition. Your backup/restore application must use the VSS Hyper-V writer to insure that the resulting backup is consistent. The data included in such a backup includes the configuration of virtual machines, snapshots associated with the virtual machines, and virtual hard disks used by the virtual machines.

        Conducting parent partition-based backups in a CSV environment requires that the backup / restore application be compatible with CSV.  Please check with your backup/restore application vendor to ensure the proper version for compatibility with CSV.  Here's a few links to CSV compatible solutions:

        Systems Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2010 beta:
        http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/dataprotectionmanager/en/us/2010beta-overview.aspx

        Computer Associates ARCserve:
        https://support.ca.com/irj/portal/anonymous/solndtls?aparNo=RO09230&os=WINDOWS&actionID=3


        You sound fairly well informed, so I probably haven't told you anything you don't already know.
        Just curious on the impact, is Windows Server Backup your companies enterprise backup solution of choice?

        Thanks!
        Elden

           

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        • Friday, July 10, 2009 5:19 AM
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          The primary methods used  for Backup/Restore for CSV/Hyper-V are:

          Guest or VM based backup
          Guest based backup is when application data or volumes used by the Virtual Machine are backed up from within the guest VM. The Backup/Restore application is installed in the Virtual Machine as if it were a physical server and backup operations are managed from the VM. Some Enterprise-class Backup/Restore applications utilize a central “management server” and backup-agents are installed on each VM and/or server. Whether using a single-server or an Enterprise backup product, VM based backup is a commonly used method for backing up application data in a Hyper-V environment. In the Guest-based approach, the individual Virtual Machines are managed for backup/restore in the same manner as is done for a group of physical servers. This means the backup/restore software you are using for your servers today should work seamlessly in a Hyper-V/CSV environment. Perform a backup from within the guest operating system before you perform a full backup of the server running Hyper-V.

          Backup from the Hyper-V Parent partition
          Host based backup is when the Virtual Machine(s) configuration and state along with any associated VHD’s are backed up from the Host or parent partition. Your backup/restore application must use the VSS Hyper-V writer to insure that the resulting backup is consistent. The data included in such a backup includes the configuration of virtual machines, snapshots associated with the virtual machines, and virtual hard disks used by the virtual machines.

          Conducting parent partition-based backups in a CSV environment requires that the backup / restore application be compatible with CSV.  Please check with your backup/restore application vendor to ensure the proper version for compatibility with CSV.  Here's a few links to CSV compatible solutions:

          Systems Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2010 beta:
          http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/dataprotectionmanager/en/us/2010beta-overview.aspx

          Computer Associates ARCserve:
          https://support.ca.com/irj/portal/anonymous/solndtls?aparNo=RO09230&os=WINDOWS&actionID=3


          You sound fairly well informed, so I probably haven't told you anything you don't already know.
          Just curious on the impact, is Windows Server Backup your companies enterprise backup solution of choice?

          Thanks!
          Elden

             
          • Friday, July 10, 2009 11:29 AM
             
             
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            I'm evaluating DPM at the moment, which works quite well with Hyper-V clusters, but doesn't support support CSV yet (and also has a lot of VSS issues when running on R2, but I guess they will be addressed by RTM).

            Windows Server Backup works really well when there's a single physical server, and can be persuaded to work with clusters, the main hassle being that you have to co-ordinate backups and placement of VMs at the time of backup. So if you wanted a centralized backup, you'd have one node responsible for backups, and have to quick migrate each VM to that node before backup and then back to it's "home" node afterwards. CSV and live migration, and WSB's new ability to backup files as well as entire volumes, would actually make this method more workable, if only WSB actually supported CSV.

            Guest based backup isn't always a practical solution. E.g. I host VMs for other people, and keep them isolated from my domain and from each other in terms of networking. So installing an agent inside a VM that I don't fully control, and sorting out the networking so that it can see the backup server and nothing else is a lot more hassle than host based backup.

               
            • Tuesday, July 28, 2009 6:54 PM
               
               
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              We currently back up VMs using diskshadow.exe and a simple copy script. Will we be able to make a snapshot of C: (including clusterstorage folder), expose as a drive letter, and copy from the exposed drive as we currently do?
                 
              • Tuesday, September 01, 2009 9:28 PM
                 
                 
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                Some feedback for you Elden: We use CommVault for most SAN attached server and scripted ntbackup and wbadmin complete with logging, mail alerts etc ... log and backup archiving/cleaning/purging for all other server (20) serves us well and we have used it very succesfully. We use vbscript so it also works on W2K8 core. we enumerate the drives on our quick migration cluster so we can do host based backups on both hosts without needing to know which one has control at the moment of the disks. The enumeration only shows the disks that are under the hosts control. For certain servers we do both host and guest based backups. PowerShell becomes an option with R2.
                On our live migration nodes we'll only do guest backups using windows backup. We'll see when CommVault Sympana supports CVS how our plan will evolve for the future. DPM will evaluated but ... no CVS support as of yet.
                   
                • Tuesday, September 29, 2009 10:49 PM
                   
                   
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                  DPM 2010 beta is now available:
                  http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/dataprotectionmanager/en/us/2010beta-overview.aspx

                  You can backup VMs on CSVs:

                  Robust and flexible protection and recovery for the following Microsoft virtualization environments:

                  • Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2

                  • Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V

                  • Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V

                  • Hyper-V Server 2008 and 2008 R2

                  • Protection of Live Migration-enabled servers running on CSV in Hyper-V R2

                  • Flexibility to protect virtual machines from Windows guests or from the hypervisor host

                  • Host-based backups will now enable single-item restores from within the VHD

                  • Ability to restore virtual machines to an alternative host

                  Juraj
                     
                  • Thursday, January 21, 2010 6:13 AM
                     
                     
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                    CommVault Simpana 8.0 introduces CSV & Live Migration support for their Virtual Server iDataAgent with Service Pack 4. 
                       
                    • Tuesday, January 26, 2010 1:32 PM
                       
                       
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                      Still the only options to live backup VMs on CSV are DPM 2010, ARCserve and CommVault?

                      I'm planning the migration of our Virtual Server hosts to Hyper-V R2 hosts + the use of CSV to perform Live Migrations.
                      Actually I shut down the VMs and use NetBackup to copy all virtual machines files. I'm new to clustered systems, I'd like to know if it is possible to perform a simple copy of the files held on CSV...
                         
                      • Monday, March 01, 2010 12:25 PM
                         
                         
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                        Or you could try backup exec 2010. backupexec.com
                        ashutosh
                           
                        • Tuesday, March 02, 2010 10:05 PM
                           
                           
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                          Or you could try backup exec 2010. backupexec.com
                          ashutosh

                          Yeah, and Symantec NetBackup 7 too ;)