DFS and VHD: Anyone tried it?

[Mr.Ben]

No, not a post about sitting on a sofa from a bankrupt furniture store and taking something that kills rabbits.

Has anyone tried this:

Creating a DFS share and putting a VHD on it.

Then boot up the VHD and run as usual.

I've been looking a Virtual Machines but can't really afford an iSCSI SAN to store the VM's, My servers have plenty of storage though.

The downside: Whilst the VM's are running DFS will not replicate them as they will be seen as 'open' files

Availability is not an issue, as the Virtual Servers that will be running will have only non essential services

If I script a shutdown of the servers about 8 in the evening, then restart them in the morning DFS should have had time to replicate them.

If I have a disaster, I can boot up last nights VM from the DFS share on another server.

Any thoughts or problems with these assumptions before I try it?

[srochford]

Why do you want them on a DFS? I'm guessing that you're not trying to run multiple copies of the same server (scary idea!) so is this just a way of getting a backup made semi-automagically?

If so, what we do is script a "save state" of the VMs overnight, we then copy the files that make up the VM off to a backup server and do a "restore state". This is pretty quick and gives us good copies of each machine that could quickly be put back on another host server if anything ever goes wrong.

Happy to share the script if it would help.

[Mr.Ben]

Oh no, I just want a very cheap and cheerful alternative to having to do this manually.

The servers would only be booted on one machine (a very nice quad core box), but in case this ever died I would need to have these services back up on a different box quickly.

Can I have a look at your script - do you run this every night?

Thanks for the help, Ben

[NHnerd]

If this is still alive, What about the following.

Schedule a host to shutdown / commit changes / copy vhd to local share with DFS rep to other hper-v / start guest OS
or Guest OS turn off / Robo copy VHD and SAV files to local drive that DFS is replicating on. / start Guest OS.

[geoffgoat]

I was faced with a similar problem to you. Maintaining a replica of the VHDs to our DR site. I just found this tool yintersync www dot yinter dot net which uses rsync as its backend but is more than just a gui on top of this. It also uses shadow copies to be able to replicate live VHDs without powering down the virtual machine.

Because it uses rsync only the changes are transferred so backing up all my VHDs (2tb) takes less than a day and is transmitted across a 4mbit wan link.

[rbance]

Have a look at FREENAS....this may work for you from a ISCI or NFS perspective. NFS has a number of key advantages with what you are trying to do as well.....

Also for backups of VMs....look and see what VEEAM backup and replication or IBM FASTBACK can do for you.....

Can I ask if you considered ESXi? It is free...But I would look to license it though....