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Deduplication folder create in VHD or pass through...

samd
Level 3

We have a standalone Hyper-V server where I have a guest Windows 2008 R2 VM running. I plan to install Backup Exec 2010 R3 in this Hyper-V VM. I prefer this over installing to the physical Hyper-V server. This Hyper-V server is connected to a Dell MD3000 DAS via a PERC controller and SAS cables. The drives are actually 1TB SATA in the DAS. Pass through disks in the Hyper-V world have a small performance benefit and mainly would be used for SQL Server VMs. I don't care one bit about this performance gain for Backup Exec and prefer the advantages of a VHD instead of a pass through. However I'm trying to think how I would even set this up. For instance I have a 1 TB RAID 10 volume on the DAS I plan on providing to the VM to be used as the deduplication folder. I'm just thinking to myself how this would look. This may require some people to chime in who are familiar with Hyper-V but do I just create a VHD on the volume at whatever size I want? And I can expand this to whatever size I want? Meaning I could start out with a 200GB fixed size VHD and then expand this as I see the disk in the operating system that Backup Exec is running on getting close to that. There is no need I don't think to start off giving the whole 1TB to the VM.

 

Thanks in advance for any advice.

3 REPLIES 3

teiva-boy
Level 6

While pass-through would be preferred, VHD would work.  Not sure if Hyper-V has caught up with the times yet over VMWare..  But expand VHD disks, down BE services, do a diskpart expand operation, and start BE services.

Colin_Weaver
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

As DeDuplication has very high RAM and CPU usage we normally recommend installing Media Servers on Physical systems not virtualized ones.

Also you cannot attach the media server to a tape drive (or reliably physical USB disk) if it is virtualized - so if you intend to periodically duplicate DeDup data to some form of medium to store offsite you should also use a Physical server.

One final point, if your media server is held inside the same Hyper-V host that contains the systems you are backing up then you are putting all your eggs in one basket and if something happens to the host you would lose both the backup server and your produiction servers in one go, much better therefore to both make the media server physical and put it on separate hardware (so not on the actual host unless using the SBS Licensing for BE)

samd
Level 3
I have plenty of resources dedicated to the VM. 12GB RAM and 4 CPUs. I plan on reducing that as from what I've been reading the dedup engine isn't multithreaded. Also will watch memory usage and reduce probably. To get data to tape for offsite storage we just plan on moving (copy set I believe is the term) to another location that is a physical machine with a tape drive tied to it. This will result in an additional copy of data. But that can be done whenever, just like the tape backup from that location will be. The media server is on a standalone Hyper-V host that is not hosting any VMs that we plan to back up. Additionally the dedup will be going to DAS. Additionally I plan on doing an export of the VM that is hosting Backup Exec every now and then as well.