Backing up VM's on Hyper-V

[matt_allford]

Hey guys,

Probably an exhausted question, but I couldn't seem to find a definate answer on what I am looking for.

We have a client we are about to make a proposal to and are trying to decide on some backup software that will be suitable. They will be running 1 physical machine (running Server 2008 R2) with Hyper-V enabled. There will be 2 guest machines, SBS 2011 and Server 2008 R2.

There will be a tape drive installed in the physical machine. We are looking at purchasing Symantec Backup Exec 2010 and Symantec Backup Exec Server Recovery 2010 as an OEM bundle.

Is it viable to:

1. Install Backup Exec 2010 on the physical machine and back up the guests? Do we need Hyper-V agents for the gues machines, or do we only need these is we want to be able to restore files withing the .VHD's, rather than the whole VHD itself
2. Can we install Backup Exec 2010 and backup the 2 guests VHD's so that in the event of a disaster, we restore the VHD's and build another VM with these VHD's? Can we restore files and folders from 'inside' the VHD files?
3. Install backup Exec Server Recovery 2010 on the physical machine and take an image of the whole physical box onto an external HDD. We're assuming when we do this that we would be able to recover the VHD's from this, but can't recover files / folders from withing the VHD's?

I appreciate your time taken to respond. Please mention if there are any extra agents we would need to purchase to do the above.

Thanks.

[pkh · Accepted solution]

You can install BE on the host and backup your VM's.  If you install the Hyper-V agent, then you can back them up on the fly.  Otherwise you would have to shut them down first before you back them up.  If you want to restore indiviidual files/folders from the VM's, then you would need to install the RAWS in the VM's.  With the Hyper-V licence, you can install RAWS in your VM's on that physical host with the Hyper-V licence.  If you need to do GRT restore of applicatoins, like Exchange, SQL Server, then you would need to buy their respective agent licences

Regarding BESR, I think your assumption is correct.  To confirm, you can post your question on the BESR forum which is seperate from this forum.

[matt_allford]

Thanks for the reply.

So;

• To back up the virtual machines on the fly, we would purchase Backup Exec 2010 and a Hyper-V agent. What does this actually back up? The VHD files or?
• The above (Symantec Backup Exec 2010 and the Hyper-V agent) will allow us to back up / restore individual files and folders from guest machines. 1 Hyper-V agent covers us off on unlimited gues machines?

[pkh]

It backup the VHD, but you can extract individual files/folders from this backup during the restore.  You would need to install the RAWS in each VM for this to work.  The Hyper-V licence is per physical host.  You can have unlimited number of VM's on this physical host.

[matt_allford]

Cheers,

So the backup process from within the Backup Exec manager stays the same, and it depends on if you have deployed the RAWS in each VM as to whether you can restore individual files / folders, or do you need to set up 1 selection to backup the VM as a whole and another to back up particular files / folders?

[pkh]

You only need to do one backup of the VM as a whole.