{"id":10250,"date":"2009-12-21T19:28:37","date_gmt":"2009-12-21T19:28:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=10250"},"modified":"2009-12-21T19:28:37","modified_gmt":"2009-12-21T19:28:37","slug":"backing-up-virtual-machine-manager","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=10250","title":{"rendered":"Backing Up Virtual Machine Manager"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now that I\u2019ve dealt with backing up and restoring Hyper-V<\/a>, let\u2019s have a look at that management component, System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM).<\/p>\n

The simplest solution is to simply backup the entire VMM server.  But what if it isn\u2019t that simple for you?  What if you have a large or distributed environment?  How do you recover individual aspects?  How do you restore to a different computer?<\/p>\n

There\u2019s two aspects to VMM.  The library is a shared folder.  That\u2019s easy to backup.  You just use any old VSS enabled backup tool to backup Windows 2008 or Windows 2008 R2.  But that\u2019s only the library.  <\/p>\n

What about all the intelligence, i.e. the database?  Well, you could just do a SQL backup of the database.  That\u2019s one way.  VMM also provides a method do backup and recover the database using VMM native tools.<\/p>\n

To backup the database you can:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. In Administration view, click General<\/strong>, and then, in the Actions pane, click Back up Virtual Machine Manager<\/strong>.<\/li>\n
  2. In the Virtual Machine Manager Backup<\/strong> dialog box, type the path for a destination folder for the backup file. The folder must not be a root directory and must be accessible to the SQL Server.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    That\u2019s a GUI method and not something you\u2019ll be able to do on a schedule reliably.  You\u2019ll need a script.  VMM is based on PowerShell so with a little PSH you can create a script which you can schedule.  Luckily, Microsoft has the script up on TechNet<\/a> for both VMM 2008 and VMM 2008 R2.<\/p>\n

    That\u2019s the backup.  You\u2019ll need to be able to restore it.  There is a tool that is on the DVD that you will need to do the restore.  It is not installed on the server.  It is called SCVMMRecover.exe and it is located on the DVD at %ROOT%i386bin for a 32-bit computer, or %ROOT%amd64bin for a 64-bit computer.  The syntax to run it is:<\/p>\n

    SCVMMRecover [-Path <location>] [-Confirm]<\/p>\n

    There are two scenarios for a recovery.  If you recover to the same machine, i.e. with the same SID, then you must do some clean up work:<\/p>\n