Virtual Servers & Virtual Machines

[Steven_Rodrigue]

Hello,

I have a few questions regarding backing up MS Virtual Servers and their corresponding .VHD files.

1)     Support for Virtual Server – I'd like to know if it is supported by Symantec, and if they will help with problems if we encounter any.  Currently Symantec only lists BackupExec as "compatible"

2)    In order to support Virtual Sever, is there an agent that needs to be installed on the virtual machines?  Or does BackupExec just copy the VHD file using VSS?

3)    If an agent is needed, how do they work?  Do we treat them the same as regular servers?  For example, if we have a virtual MS Windows Server 2003 running Exchange, do we need the server agent and the Exchange agent installed and running on the virtual server?

Thanks in advance to anyone who can assist!

[Kelly_Harper]

Based on what you need to backup, you may or may not need an agent on the virtual machine itself.

If you wish to backup the entire virtual machine, you simply need an agent on the virtual server host and VSS will take care of backing up the entire .vhd file.  This of course only allows you to restore the entire virtual machine.

If you need to be able to restore individual files or components on the virtual machine, you need to install the agent on the virtual machine itself.  In your example, the remote agent and the Exchange agent...

Hope this helps...

[Steven_Rodrigue]

Hi Kelly, thanks for the reply!

I forgot to mention that in my scenario, the VHD files that need to be backup up are active, (running).

I read a MS KB Article that specifically stated that if a VHD file is running, it cannot be backed up using VSS.  Do you know if this is true?  Has Symantec developed a workaround?

[Kelly_Harper]

The Microsoft documentation can be a bit vague at times.  I can confirm that you can indeed backup live .vhd files using Backup Exec 11d and Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1.  We have been backing up a few of our live .vhd files successfully since the release of SP1; awesome feature for sure when it comes to full on DR or being able to roll the server back for any reason.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/virtualserver/evaluation/vsoverview.mspx

[Eric_Champignon]

Kelly I understand that this disucssion is in regards to Backup Exec, but would you know if backing up live .vhd files on Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 would also work withVeritas NetBackup 6.0 MP4

[Kelly_Harper]

I would love to be able to answer that question but we don't use NetBackup in our environment as we're a Windows only shop.  What I can say is that the release notes for Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 state that it supports any backup product that supports VSS backups.  If NetBackup supports the Microsoft VSS provider, you are good to go.  I'm guessing it does but I don't want to make any incorrect assumptions :)

[fabio_s]

Hello,

I would like to follow-up this post, in order to understand better if and how to backup running VMs.

I tried to backup .vhd, .vmc and .vmv files of a running virtual machine (on latest Virtual Server release).

On the host server the BE Remote Agent is installed. No AOFO.

Backup was performed with the "without a lock" option active, regarding open files.

Backup went fine but on VMs a lot of pop-up appeared (on the logoff screen) about "errors in saving xxx files, data is lost". Apparently, logging on and exploring the VMs, nothing was wrong but of course, seen those errors, I am not confident in this kind of backup.

Should I use the AOFO option to perform this kind of backup?

Should this be installed with the Remote Agent?

thanks

[Kelly_Harper]

We use the AOFO with it set to 'Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service' and the Snapshot Provider dropdown set to 'Automatic'.  We are running Backup Exec 11d though so I can not speak to the new v12 or v12.5 screens.