BE 2015 FP3 and hyper-v 2012 R2

[dhuygelaere]

Hi all,

I've an issue with be 2015 FP3 and hyper-v 2012 R2.Full backup of hyper-v host with 2 VM (2012 R2) completed successfully, but checkpoint are not removed, so nexts backup  failed. Individual backup of VM are correct, and checkpoint deleted. Any idea ?

[Colin_Weaver]

Basically the new method (that Microsoft made available to backup vendors in Hyper-V 2012, and we implemented in BE 2014 as an option - so is not that new) is the recomended method because your backup should be faster. Hence as a backup vendor (and based on Microsoft's information) it was deemed better to be the default method as backup performance is important to a backup vendor.

If having a rolling checkpoint, (note I use the word rolling as it is not a permanent checkpoint as the checkpoint is refreshed during the backup process) is a negative in your environment (possible day-day performance or space issue within your hyper-v environment etc) then you should consider changing it back.

However as these effects would be specific to a given environment we cannot directly say every customer should use one method over another and Microsoft may have their own recommendations.

Really to make a decision customers should run the backups one way for a couple of weeks and then compare the effects (in Hyper-V and in BE) with the other way for a similar timeframe.

[dperlberg]

Colin

So we tweaked the setting to go back to standard and i ran the powershell commands - but backup exec is still creating checkpoints (that cannot be removed in the gui) on our hyper-v virtual machines. any other settings or ideas? i need to stop these checkpoints...

Dean

[Colin_Weaver]

@dperlberg - assuming

a) The powershell commands were seen to remove the checkpoints

b) you recreated your job after changing the setting to the standard method (note this should not be required but suggesting this just in case)

Then you may have to speak to Microsoft and / or look in the Hyper-V event logs to work out why the checkpoints are remaining. Basically we cannot be responsible for the lack of removal when all we  are doing is making calls to a Microsoft process. Also at this current time we are not aware of any other customers that switched back to standard method (and used the powershell command) that are having such an issue.

As an aside Micorosft did change something between Hyper-V 2012 and Hyper-V 2012 R2, as for the non-R2 versions you should not need the Powershell commands as such what we can and can't do is affected by changes Microsoft make and it might be that a newer patch level has changed  the behaviour again.