We have recently installed a three-node clustered Hyper-V environment. We primarily use the cluster to host virtual machines, but we have recently made the discovery that a file server in Hyper-V can be set up as a shared service rather than creating and maintaining a virtual server to be a file server. That is a great feature because it puts the file server closer to the "bare metal" instead of using a virtual machine as a file server that would have all the extra overhead and maintenance required for a full-blown virtual file server.
However, now we have the issue about the best way to back up the files on the file server. With a virtual file server it would be no problem. We could simply install a backup agent on the virtual file server and back up the files the old fashioned way. But with a file server set up as a shared service on one of the hosts, setting up a backup scheme becomes problematic. Do we install the backup agent on all three hosts in case the file server service gets moved? When the file service gets moved to another host in the cluster, the drive associated with the file server moves as well. So if the service exists on HOST01, then HOST1 has an F: drive that is only used by the file server service (incidentally, the drive is physically located in a volume on an Equallogics SAN). If the file server service is moved to HOST2, then the F: is moved to HOST2 and is no longer available on HOST1.
With all that in mind, is there any way to set up a Backup Exec job that would be able to deal with that situation without changing the job file selection every time the file server service was moved from host to host?
Thanks for any suggestions!
