How can implement Backup Exec 12.5 on a Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 server?
- How can implement Backup Exec 12.5 on a Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 server? I have two VM running, SBS 2008 and a member server, Server 2003 R2. Can I install Backup Exec 12.5 on either VM and back up both VMs?
Does Backup Exec 12.5 support backup-to-disk folders that would included rotating, external USB hard drives? I am open to suggestions.
Thanks,
All Replies
- the questions that you ask are very specific to the BackupExec product, and would be better served by asking in a BackupExec forum.
Generally, you have two ways of installing backup agents on a hypervisor.
1) within the parent partition (the host OS at the physical console of the server)
- in this case:
- if using Hyper-V Server the agent must be able to install and run without the Windows Shell
- if the application is VSS aware, then there is greater safety for the VM
- the best option is VM level backup - the agent is Hyper-V aware and can determine where the virutal disks of the VMs are
- the second best option is VHD level backup - you have the data of hte VM but you would have to re-create the configuration file on restore
- all VM disks must be VHD (no passthrough)
2) within each guest OS (this is more of a traditional backup model - each VM OS will have a local agent running)
- in this case:
- this works when a backup product is not Hyper-V or VSS aware.
- this works in the case that data is on a passthrough disk
- this works with older backup agents
- you would restore the vm data into an 'empty' vm - just like restoring a physical server, your VM configuration is not backed up, the disk is.
I hope that this helps in your planning and thinking.
Brian Ehlert (hopefully you have found this useful) Brian, very helpful, thanks. I discovered after my original post that Backup Exec has to install on the host operating system so Hyper-V Server is out of the question. Let me give you some more detail of what I am trying to accomplish and why:
You used to be able to install RIM's BES (express version) on a Small Business Server 2003 server if you had under 30 users. This no longer works with with SBS 2008 and a small business owner is forced to buy a second server if they want their own BES. My average SBS customer is between 15 - 35 users,
I am trying to find a solution with the least expense and so far have my SBS 2008 and Server 2003 (with BES 4.1) VM running inside Hyper-V Server 2008 R2. If it were my network, I would have my data on a NAS and use iSCSI and I would still be unsure about how to back up my mailstore.
For a potential customer, I would want my Hyper-V sever to be a 'one device fits all'. A member on the Microsoft public newsgroup had suggested USB over Ethernet as a possibility. Lately I have been putting Dell RD1000 backup drives in servers I provide. This would appear as a local physical disk on the Hypervisor. Could this be implemented in a backup senario from within the SBS 2008 VM? I do not consider the BES back a priority item until I can get the mail store and user data files on the SBS VM backed up first.
Thanks,- Sounds like you would need to use Server 2008 with the Hyper-V Role
A word of caution - once the Hyper-V role is installed this is not a 'regular' Windows Server anymore. The Windows Server that you see at the console is closer to the definition of a 'Parent Partition'. Yes, applications can be installed into it, but it is not recommended in a production environment.
Also, WS08 includes virtual instance licensing that may help you (not for SBS, but it covers server operating systems) - this does not apply to Hyper-V Server.
IF the version of BackupExec that you suggest is Hyper-V aware - then by all means use it.
If it is VSS aware, that is another bonus.
If you can attach a drive and the host sees it as local, all the better.
My only concern is my past experience with BackupExec and the high overhead and disk requirements of the BackupExec Backup server. the catalog, the backup processes. I recall they were not low overhead.
This takes extra processing and disk space on the host. Just something to think about.
Installing just a single backup application in the Host I see as minimal impact. Loading Windows Services into the host is a totally different issue - see my second paragraph.
USB over Ethernet needs testing in your scenario.
Could it be done? Yes.
Are there 'better' ways? Yes.
Since you are in the design phase:
Depending on the size of your mailstore it could reside in a VHD. Then you start to consider IO performance and the IO impact that one VM has upon another (I have responded to a few threads about that as well).
Many VHDs on a single volume all impact the single disk IO resource. And threfore VM A impacts VM B - and BackupExec taking a snapshot will affect them as well.
This is where all the processes have to be thought out.
Can you do this as a single box solution? Absolutely. - but it takes a bit more planning than just installing SBS on its own hardware and installing the local backup software. there is a whole additional layer that needs to be considered and factored in and planned for.
Also remember, using virtualization you can take the applications that you might pile onto each other in a single server configuration and actually spread them out into a multi-vm installation. Thus adding flexability.
I would work very closely with your first cilent and incentivize them to allow you to experiment and test. As it is necessary to fully understand what is going on.
I guarantee that you will find things that you did not expect.
Brian Ehlert (hopefully you have found this useful) - Brian, the incentive behind my project is to reduce the cost by putting everything on one box like I could in the past with SBS 2003. I considered WS08 but my understanding is 'standard' will only support one VM and I need two - one for SBS 2008 and one for the BES. If I move to an 'enterprise' version of WS08, then I have defeated the purpose of my project because the cost escalates considerably. At this point it is cheaper to physically install SBS 2008 on one box and put the BES on a cheap, 2nd server.
Of course, there is a benefit of explring the technology and making it fit future application. I would never make a customer a guinea pig but I would consider retiring my physical SBS 2008 server for a Hyper-V version.
I plugged a USB drive (now E:) into my Hyper-V 2008 Server testing to see if I could access it from the SBS 2008 VM. Unfortuneately it only creates a VHD on E: and I do not think that is going to do me any good for backups, let alone Windows backup in SBS.
Thanks, - There is no software limitation of how many VMs a particular edition will support.
The edition of Server 2008 defines homw many VM license entitlements you get (Server VMs that don't need their own licenses).
Only your hardware configuration limits the number of VMs that you can run.
This is at the bottom of hte Hyper-V page:
http://www.microsoft.com/hyper-v-server/en/us/default.aspx
The only way to get a USB drive into a Hyper-V VM is:
1) USB over network
2) RDP directly into the VM and enable the USB passhtrough of the Remote Desktop Client.
http://itproctology.blogspot.com/2008/07/remoting-devices-into-hyper-v-child.html
Both are primarily user mode situations.
Personally, I would run SBS and your RIM server as VMs, under Hyper-V and add-in a backup solution that runs at the host.
However, I don't know the current support level of SBS running as a VM.
I would not install SBS in the Hyper-V Parent partition and then run your RIM server as a VM.
The primary reason is that hte Hyper-V parent can support additional roles, however it is not recommended in production. The performance (because this is a parent partition and therefore does not work the same as a regular OS) will be the main detractor.
While this works fine for test and demo environments, true. You will quickly see that some apps are resource hogs and do not perform well in this type of installation.
The parent partition, while not being a VM, can be best described as being a type of hybrid VM. Adding the Hyper-V Role shoves a full hypervisor between the parent parition and the hardware. And adds the overhead into the parent parititon of manging all of hte VMs and their respective device IO, while at the smae time making that parent the first one to make resource sacrifices on behalf of its children.
This is very differnt from the Virtual Server model.
Brian Ehlert (hopefully you have found this useful) - Do you have a suggestion for a backup solution that runs at the host? Can you explain to me what 'passthrough disks' are and why they won't work here?
Thanks once again. - A passthrough disk is a physical disk of hte host (local storage, SAN storage) that is presented to the VM.
At the Host the disk exists but is offline (the host only knows a disk exists, but does not bring it online and therefore cannot read the file system of the diks).
The OS in the VM sees this physical disk and uses it just like any other disk.
Passthrough disks used to be used in situations where high disk IO was required. However, in most cases virtual disk and physical disk performance is almost equal.
The other time that a Passthrough is used is for large data volumes (file servers) or for SQL servers.
In this case the passthrough disk is most likely on a SAN and SAN backup utilities are being relied upon to backup the volume (due to size, speed, replication, other features, etc.).
I would do this today in a situation where this model fits.
In regards to backup - when the backup is running within the host, the host can see a VHD on a file system that it manages, but it cannot see the data on a passthrough disk, because technically it cannot see the file system of the passthrough disk. Yes, the io is technically passing throught the vmbus, but the OS is not reading it nor looking at it as a file system.
There are third party backup solutions that are coming up to speed with Hyper-V. Then it is a decision of how do you want to deploy your backup, and on what type of disk and where do you want your data.
Brian Ehlert (hopefully you have found this useful) - This seems to be coming together bit-by-bit. I used DisPart to offline the the USB drive E: attached to the Hypervisor. I added a SCSI controller in SBS 2008 and attached it to the USB drive. In SBS 2008, the drive shows up as a local drive E:.
I ran the backup wizard in SBS 2008 and it took ownership of E: and set it up for scheduled backups. This is exactly what I want and I hope it works when USB drives are swapped. Lately I have been ordering servers with Dell's RD1000 backup and cartridges which are just packaged SATA drives. Technically it should work here if Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 does not choke when the RD1000 cartridges are swapped out. I bought a second drive this morning, tried it and it failed. It
seems Hyper-V Server 2008 sees the swapped drives OK but SBS fails to
see the drive when it is swapped. I wonder if it assigns a GUID to
the drive.The first time I swapped the drives with the new USB drive, I had to
'offline' it. Then only Disk 0 showed up in DiskPart. I issued a
'rescan' command and both disks showed up. From that point there was
no problem swapping the disks on the Hypervisor. I would do a 'list
disk' is DiskPart after swapping the drives and each drive showed up
uniquely.Inside SBS 2008 was a different story. After swapping in the new disk
and scheduling the backup to run, the backup failed with an error that
it was unable to find the disk. There is an SBS wizrd that allows you
to change/modify the backup job currently scheduled. In there is a
button to 'rescan' the available drives and there is no doubt it saw
drive E: as a backup disk.I plugged the original disk disk back in and schedule the backup to
run and it ran fine. I think I am going to take the second USB drive
I bought and try to configure it like it like the first disk SBS took
ownership over. I am going to run the backup wizard a second time on
the new USB drive.- Sounds like you are making progress.
I am guessing that the problem is actually with how the OS of the SBS system identifies the disk and then binds the backup job to that disk.
You may need to set a job to each disk with some type of rule that if job a fails run job b and so on.
good luck!
Brian Ehlert (hopefully you have found this useful) It looks like I am back to square one. Hyper-V Server will recognize the drives being swapped but Server 2008 won't. It's almost as if the SCSI controller in the VM binds itself to the physical disk.
I have done a 'rescan' in DiskPart and I have also re-ran the backup wizard in SBS. It only sees the initial disk set up in the SCSI controller.
Also, I can't see USB over Ethernet working either because none of the software I looked at supports Hyper-V Server where part of the utility would have to be installed.
One of the reasons I had ruled out WS08 with the Hyper-V role enabled was because of the added cost to the customer. If the customer wanted SBS 2008 and a BES, they would have to buy WS08 for the hypervisor, SBS 2008, and WS08 for the BES.
I do not know how I could control SBS backup to alternate schedules as this appears to be an integrated part of the product. I'm Sad! :-(- That might be a question for the SBS folks:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sbs/bb676723.aspx
Brian Ehlert (hopefully you have found this useful) Update:
I am trying the VHD route. In SBS I have created a 100GB VHD on drive E: which is the USB drive plugged into Hyper-V Server 2008.
After it was created, I went into Disk Manager in SBS, activated it, gave it a drive letter E:, formatted it and then took it offline.
I shut down SBS (VM), unlugged the USB drive from the hypervisor and plugged in the second, matching USB drive. Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 has hot-swap capabilities. I went itto the settings for SBS and removed the original VHD. I am now recreating the VHD with the same volume name and fixed size as the one I just deleted.
I am hoping that I can do a Windows Server Backup to these drives and be able to swap them out by setting them 'offline' in Disk Manager before the swap. It takes a really long time to make a 100GB VHD!
Hi,
Please refer to the following post:
USB over Network, configure help
Vincent Hu
