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Hobson Beeman

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Backing up a HyperV host?

I have been looking for a reliable solution to back up a Server 2012 R2 Server acting as a hyper-V host with 2 VMs. I see several expensive appliance based solution out there and others. I know data preservation is a top priority, but small offices have limited budgets that just don't allow for big solutions ($1500-2000 appliance then $300-400/mo for a 1 TB backup). I did read that windows server backup can do the job and I have used it successfully on servers. However, never on a Hyper-V host. Does anyone have experience in using it in this manner? I would like to hear your opinions?
Thanks - HBee
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Hobson Beeman

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Thanks, typically the windows server backup is a secondary fall back. I use Datto as well as Acronis for server to cloud and physical backups. However of late I am moving away from Acronis as their support is lacking and new Acronis 12 model backup I don't like. I just need to get something going in the interim till I had a full solution in place for the next week of so. I think I looked at Veam and my impression of it based on comments about it was that it was complicated and required a SQL database?? Not sure about Altaro.
No one really answered the question about using the native windows server backup.
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Adam, thanks for your comments. This was more of what I was looking for with respect to hands on experience in this type of scenario. For now!!! it will be backed up to a USB 3.0 drive enclosure with a WD Red hard drive. Again this is not the final solution, but something for the short interim. The 2 VMs are a domain controller and a application server that runs a program which uses SQL Express 2014 to manage it's database.
I would recommend backing the dc up from the vm's os if it's not 2012 or later. Restoring earlier versions from a vm backup can have some pretty bad consequences. Otherwise, you should be good with wsb as an interim solution.
Yes, both VMs are Server 2012 R2 environments. I was kinda thinking that it would be best to backup the VMs up directly to an ext USB drive, But, that would mean I would have to dedicate a physical drive to each VM? if I understand it correctly ?
I just wasn't sure that if you backed up the Hyper-V host to the ext USB drive how things would come together?? if you has to restore. I guess it would be all or nothing. This is new ground to me. Ideally a third party solution would be best if it can do all three environments, the host and each VM and be able to restore the VMs independent of each other and If the host goes down then you should be able to restore all of it without issue.
No comment has been added to this question in more than 21 days, so it is now classified as abandoned.

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-- Lee W MVP (https:#a42254277)
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-- Adam Brown (https:#a42254596)
-- Lee W MVP (https:#a42254558)


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