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SBS 2008 R2 Backup in VM

How can you use SBS 2008 Backup in a Hyper-v scenario if USB ports are not passed to the Virtual Machine? The recommended configuration for SBS 2008 Premium is SBS SErver and Std Server running as VM's within Server 2008 as the Host machine. USB Ports are not passed from the Host machine to any VM's. SBS Backup recognizes removable drives only. How do you do a backup in this instance?

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Cliff Galiher

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ebooyens

A few ideas here for you to keep in mind - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd239199(WS.10).aspx

The way I understand you'd do this is use the host's backup to back the host and guests up to your USB drive, as this would back up the VHDs it includes all the data of the guests.

Personally I also prefer running backups in the guests for the applications such a Exchange so I understand what you're asking.

Two things: first you can back up data to a network location using the command prompt tool wbadmin, general example "Wbadmin start backup -backupTarget:\\[Server]\[Share name] -include:C: -vssFull -quiet" (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd767786.aspx)

Secondly, if you really wanted to pass through a USB drive you can but it's not great - on the host go into disk management, take the USB drive offline, then edit the settings of the guest (while it's turned off which is the problem here...) and add the offline disk to the guest vm, then start it up again.

Problem here of course is that you've now assigned a USB drive as a physical disk to the guest. In order to remove it you'll have to shut it down. Not great at all Microsoft!!

The only thing you can't back up to a network location with wbadmin is system state/image backup (in 2008 R2 you can) but again you can get a work-around for this if you have enough space - assign an additional VHD to the VM and run the system state/image backup to that drive, then use the host to back up all the VHDs, or run a script to copy the backup files off to your USB or other location.

Last comment (sorry this is getting long) is that I'd spend a few bucks on something like Vembu StoreGrid pro or at least Acronis (not so great for Exchange though) so you have a proper backup solution that covers all the basis and provides reporting and monitoring which is where the Windows Backup lacks seriously.