{"id":9173,"date":"2008-09-09T11:53:00","date_gmt":"1999-11-29T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=9173"},"modified":"2008-09-09T11:53:00","modified_gmt":"1999-11-29T20:00:00","slug":"backing-up-hyper-v-vms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=9173","title":{"rendered":"Backing Up Hyper-V VM’s"},"content":{"rendered":"

I found a link to this on the MS Virtualisation Team Blog this morning.\u00a0 It’s an article <\/a>on things you should consider when backing up VM’s.\u00a0 It’s well worth reading<\/p>\n

There’s two ways you can approach backing up VM’s.\u00a0 The first is to treat each VM as a normal server by installing an agent in the guest OS and using that to backup data, configurations and the system state.\u00a0 This is the most comprehensive solution you’ll get.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

The other solution is to take a snapshot of the machine itself.\u00a0 Hyper-V allows this by using Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS).\u00a0 A VSS writer stops the VM for a couple of milliseconds to capture it in a consistent state.\u00a0 Consider a database being processed … do you want to snap the VM while things are happening?\u00a0 Maybe you’ll get one table showing part of a transaction and another table not showing the other half of the transaction.\u00a0 That’s not pretty at all!\u00a0 This process used by VSS is also how you can get consistent VSS snapshots of SQL and Exchange.<\/p>\n

Another thing to consider is virtualised DC’s.\u00a0 Just like in VMware ESX, it’s recommended that you have at least one (preferably two) physical DC’s for your network to avoid potential chicken and egg scenarios.\u00a0 But you might have other DC’s that are virtualised.\u00a0 You should treat them just like physical DC’s.\u00a0 Trying to do clever things likes snapshots and rollbacks of virtualised DC’s will lead to horrible scenarios like the USN rollback<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This article <\/a>also mentions pass through disks not being supported by VSS.\u00a0 If you think about it, of course they cannot.\u00a0 There is no host file system when using a pass through disk to perform VSS.\u00a0 The VM is using a raw LUN.\u00a0 Be very, very careful about using SAN snapshots here; it’s not supported for a consistent state snapshot if the VM is running.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I found a link to this on the MS Virtualisation Team Blog this morning.\u00a0 It’s an article on things you should consider when backing up VM’s.\u00a0 It’s well worth reading There’s two ways you can approach backing up VM’s.\u00a0 The first is to treat each VM as a normal server by installing an agent in … Continue reading “Backing Up Hyper-V VM’s”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hyper-v"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t