Backup strategy, 2008 R2, Hyper-V Cluster vith SCVMM

[knutho]

I'm implementing a Windows 2008 R2, Hyper-V cluster with SCVMM, and I'm wondering if anyone have any thoughts on backup strategies.

I have multiple clustered hosts with Hyper-V. All virtual machines resides on Clustered Shared Volumes (CSV). Virtual machines can be at any host at any given time. They are all configured for HA, and we use Live Migration when we do maintenance on a host.

What would be a sensible backup strategy for the hosts?

 

[knutho]

What would be a sensible backup strategy for the hosts?

Since I got no answers, I will answer myself.

TSM does not seem to run very well in a clustered enviroment with CSV.
Well, it runs well, but the features are not impressive if you compare with Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager.
System Center Data Protection Manager is not an option for me, so I wont discuss it here.

What I ended up doing is to skip backup of the hosts. Apart from virtual-machine files they contain no usefull data.
The best solution seems to be ordinary TSM-backup of the virtual machines themself. One agent per VM.

It would have been nice to be able to do incremental backups of the VHD-files residing on CSV, but to my knowledge this is not possible with TSM.

 

[mclawler]

Does anyone know if this has improved with the new patches and updates? We are a Hyper-V shop and it would be nice to have decent support for CSV backups... (full and incremental support without having to put an agent on each virtual).

 

[rallingham]

Have you looked at TDP for Virtual Environments? It appears to support Hyper V and VMWare. Clustering is another issue though.
You can have the one agent almost anywhere you want it to be and do full backup and file level backup.

 

[pchapus]

Hi
I awake this subject because it emerge on top on searches and i think a point can be done since:
- TSM for V.E. is now capable of VM backups, full and incremental, on VMware AND HyperV
- For HyperV, you have to install a tiny software inside the HyperV base then it works well day by day
- You can restore a full VM on it's original HyperV or another one
- You can mount a VM on another VM, so you are able to drag and drop files you need
- You can start a VM from it's backup, I.E. for testing purpose or emergency
- These two last features needs to install a little tool (VM Recovery agent) inside the VM itself
- The most lacking feature is that there is no integration with SCVMM, the Microsoft tool used to manage VMs. This is a pity because SCVMM has an API, and some other editors have integrated the VM backup/restore management in it. For now, i have not found any bypass or OEM software to get this very important facility in SCVMM.

One of my biggest customer is using TSM for V.E. for HyperV heavily on it's VM and is satisfied about reliability, but complains too on the no SCVMM integration. Hi IBM, are you reading this? ;-)

Pierre, tsmservice.fr