Need advice RE: SAN and Hyper-V Support

[bubbawny]

Hi folks:

First, thank you for taking the time to read and advise me about the info below. I'm grateful to anyone offering support and advice on my technical challenges.

A bit of architecture:

In my environment, we have mostly Windows 2003 File & Print Servers, SQL 2005 Servers, Exchange 2003. We do have a couple WIndows 2008 servers running File & Print, DFS. We are native W2k3 in terms of Forest and Domain Functional levels.

Like many, we've adopted Hyper-V. We currently have a Lefthand (HP) iSCSI two node SAN...the P4000 series. Our Hyper-V Host servers are running either Windows 2008 with the Hyper-V role, or Windows 2008 R2 with the Hyper-V role.

On each Hyper-V host, we have a LUN attached as the "F: drive" to each host via simple iSCSI and Disk Management on the host. It is on this F:\-drive we store VHD files for our Hyper-V VMs.

We've been chasing our tails with Symantec and HP/Lefthand for some time in coming up with a means of backing up our RUNNING VMs that are stored as VHD files on the HOSTS.

My goal is to find an efficient way of:

1. Being able to recover the WHOLE VM (VHD, Config) as a single entity
2. Being able to recover PARTIAL files  on VMs.

We've iterated from BE10D to 11D to 12D to 12.5 with no luck. In working with Symantec support, they basically said Hyper-V R2 was not supported, except through 12.5. Last night, I learned BE2010 is out, but I see from these forums that many are having backup issues with Symantec in a Hyper-V environment still

I was succesfully able to backup a WHOLE VM without using the GRT option of the Microsoft Virtual Server Agent of 12.5. When I turn that on, I cannot backup using GRT. I found out, like others, that Symantec in 12.5 does not support GRT to tape, so I tried to back up to a B2D folder. Same error:

V-79-57344-38721 - Failed to mount one or more virtual disk images:


BTW: I'm fully "live updated" with all updates with 12.5.

My 12.5 server is a Windows 2008 non-R2 server, 64-bit with a B2D folder on an iSCSI LUN and an Exabyte magnum 1 x 24 LTO-4 drive.

So While it would appear that I can back up a whole VM, I cannot get option 2 to go.

I am thinking about having to deploy the BE12.5 Agent within each VM and running secondary jobs to facilitate being able to recover individual files within a VM.

My thoughts are that in a quick disaster, i could recover the whole VM, then restore the most updated select files I need to get a VM back online. the problem is, this more than doubles my back up window for my VM environment as i'm 1) backign up the whole host, and then doing a secondary job to back up the files in each VM.

So all of this is a long winded way of saying that this seems so inefficient. Basically, I end up backing up 80GB of the WHOLE VM, then another 65GB of just the individual files i'm concerned about.  More simply, it's like backing up twice for each VM.

I can't back up just by file because those files reside in a VHD. So full VM recovery would be very difficult. But I cannot get the GRT to work, and backing up a whole VHD file does not give me the Granular file recover as it doesn't work in 12.5.

i'm loathe to even think about buying 2010 as it seems as if on this forum it's still an issue.

How are all of you who have Hyper-V VMs on SAN volumes going about your backups?

I guess I'm just stunned at the state of backup solutions for Virtualized environments. I've already paid for (4) complete rebuilds of the Backup Exec environment in the past year (from 10 to 11 to 12 to 12.5) and I still am unable to get production VMs backed up in a means of providing effective archival and DR.

Our production Hyper-V environment has been awesome. it's really gotten the job done. But the inability to rpovide comprehensive system recovery has made me lose hundreds of ours of sleep.

I'm thinking perhaps that a more vendor native solution may be necessary as it appears that even BE2010 is not up to snuff.

Has anyone gotten to the point with BE where they can backup full systems as well as granular files in Hyper-V and Hyper-V R2? Am I just chasing a ghost here? if so, how'd you go about it? what options and or recommendations do you have?

[teiva-boy]

Stop chasing your tail...  Call into support, and request a "Duty Manager," for escalation.  You are obviously knowledgeable (and patient by your post content)

Make Symantec escalate this to an Advance Team or Backline support.  Even tier 2 support at times, is not sufficient.

[phartman]

You do need to install the BE remote agent on all of your VMs you wish to granularly back up.  You also need to install the VM mounter program (I could be wrong on the exact name of the program) onto your media server.  The process for GRT backups of VHDs is, Backup Exec backs up the entire VHD, then mounts the vhd on the media server, then performs the granular operations (cataloging) of the files.

[teiva-boy]

I thought the agent is needed within the VM (Hyper-v or ESX) in order for the GRT info to be collected?  I was briefed that the virtual disk file is streamed, then the agent will collect the meta data.  

[phartman]

Per the admin guide, the agent on the vm serves the purpose of being able to restore individual files to the VM.  From my experience it appeared that the media server mounted the VHD and backed it up like it was any normal data disk attached to the server. 

[PWBratach]

New patch for BE2010

I had a similar problem in our Windows Server 2008 R2 with BE2010 and Hyper-V backing up to a removable RDX drive.  I thought I was up to date through LiveUpdate but after contacting Symantec support they suggested I try the following patch:

64-bit

http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/355984.htm

32-bit

http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/355983.htm

Amazingly, after applying the patch and then reinstalling the Remote Agent for Windows on the VM, I am now able to backup the complete VM using GRT and then restore either the complete VM or individual files within the VM.

Good luck,
Paul