Hyper-V with no shared storage - Backup

[AmadeusJHB]

Hi all,

I have two physical Hyper-V host servers but no shared storage in play, i.e. the VMs VHDK virtual disks reside on an internal volume inside the Hyper-V hosts on which they are running.

Best practice for SDR (Simplified disaster recovery) of the Hyper-V host is to have a full backup with ALL resources selected so the green SDR indicator remains illuminated.

Question?

Will this full SDR backup duplicate data in the backup process because leaving all selections ticked will back up the volume with the VHDKs and then the VMs again through the Hyper-V options?

Or I gues the question should be...if I deselct the volume that houses the VMDKs from the Full backup, am I still able to rebuild the host server in one simplified disaster recovery process?

[pkh · Accepted solution]

There is no double backup. The VHD's are just backup once. BE is smart enough to know that you are backing VM's. If you deselect anything, then the SDR light will go off, meaning no SDR recovery

[AmadeusJHB]

Thanks PKH,

One last noobie question, the reccomended backup method for Hyper-V VMs is to go via the Host Hyper-V agent. Are those VMs backed up to their own backup files that are recoverable to any other Hyper-V host so lets say my backup definition only selected the VMs from host 1...could I then use those backups to restore the VM to Host 2 or three for example...?

[VJware]

Yes, you can choose to redirect the VM to another Hyper-V host as well. Just install the remote agent on the other host prior to the restore.

[pkh]

Note that when you redirect the restore of a Hyper-V VM to another Hyper-V host, the target host must have the remote agent loaded and it must have a Hyper-V agent licence

[VJware]

If I recall, an additional Hyper-V Agent license is not needed since the other host is being used for a restore and not a backup.

[AmadeusJHB]

Thanks guys, I think I'm covered as we own a Capacity licence enabled for 3TB. All of the Hyper-V host servers were added to my BE server by selecting the Hyper-V agent install \ deploy option and ticking the option to install agents on all locally discovered Vms in the one task.