asked on

General HyperV and Backup question

Situation:

- 2 HyperV servers, Windows Server 2008 R2, NOT clustered.
- Backup exec to tape, running for freaking Always and never completes a backup.

So pretty messed up situation. There is a SAN where the VM's are stored on. What i wanna know is, am i thinking in the right way to solve the issues.

Goal:

1. Cluster the HyperV servers. Can this be done when servers are running on the hosts?
2. What is the best way to backup HyperV VM's? I need the servers to be out of the building. So when the building burns
down, i buy 2 new hosts and fire up the servers. What do I backup? And how?
3. Use backup exec and the tapes to backup;
- Data
- Exchange
- SQL Databases
- Profiles
- System states
- etc.

Is this the right way to go?

Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)

1. I would not recommend any cluster changes to the Host OS running VMs.

2. Veeam Backup and Replication, even available as a trial!

http://www.veeam.com/vmware-esx-backup.html

3. Tape based backup is slow and out of date. See Veeam.

SvenIA

ASKER

Thanks for the reply.

1. What if I do want the HyperV hosts to be clustered? Can I first backup the VM's and then create a cluster?

2. Is backing up the virtual harddisks enough to backup an entire server?

3. I'm stuck to tape unfortunatly.

Vishalnarse

http://www.virtualizationadmin.com/articles-tutorials/microsoft-hyper-v-articles/general/it-better-run-hyper-v-windows-server-or-standalone-hypervisor.html

or

you can migration the VM in new Vmware.

Yes you can back to the VM then you can try for cluster. Please backup entire VM folder in a new path or same path with new name folder.

Hope that work if still you need and assistance you an revert to us.

Thank you,
Vishal

Vishalnarse