Hyper-V Backups - Q's

[newpersn]

Looking at our Hyper V Hosts (3 Hosts with 2CPU each)

 

What is the best way of backing up our Virtual Servers?

 

Could i get away with running veeam free to backup our Virtuals or would a paid for solution be better?

 

Also what storage is best to backup up them on to?

 

(Sorry for the random Q's)

[rich_tech]

veeam do a product that may be decent for you - Backup Essentials, I would advocate the full product, its decent and does lots of neat things now.

 

https://www.veeam.com/smb-vmware-hyper-v-essentials.html

[Primus]

Seconded on Veeam Backup Essentials - it's awesome but check the version differences carefully! We needed enterprise rather than standard.

 

In terms of what you're going to backup to, Veeam is a to disk backup program. It supports tape but it's going to need an on disk backup before it can then move it to tape.

 

Currently I backup to an older server with 10Tb of drives in a RAID array and this also has a 20Tb NAS connected over iSCSI and added into the scale out backup repository so Veeam manages the 30Tb of space itself. From there I upload each weekly synthetic full to Google Drive (unlimited free space for schools) and I take a monthly tape.

 

The monthly tape may get canned, I haven't made a decision yet!

[Killer_Bot]

We're implementing Veeam Backup Essentials here soon (having used, and been frustrated by, Microsoft DPM for the past few years). Really intrigued by the idea of the Google Drive backup of the Synthetic full. Could you tell us more about your process Primus? We're implementing it with a 3 node failover cluster (utilising the max 6 cpu licence of the product) with around 20TB local storage. Currently implementing an idea of offsite backups using a VPN and local feeder schools but Google Drive could be an interesting alternative.

[Primus]

Our system follows that which @rogerdnixon has spoken about previously. We use CloudBerry to upload our backups - I said it uploads the weekly backup, in fact it does the weekly synthetic full and the incremental daily files too.

 

It's quite a slow upload - capped at around 100mb/sec per file despite the fact we have a gig symmetrical connection but it works. I wouldn't consider it anything but for disaster recovery given the time of getting the file downloaded from Google Drive but if the school burnt down I have a full recent backup of all our servers.

[Killer_Bot]

Thanks for that Primus. And yeah; I appreciate it's fully a disaster recovery solution only (as opposed to often used backups) but that's the kind of thing I'm looking for. With our new SAN and Veeam we're pretty much covered for both long and short term backups but no real protection for Disaster Recovery. Never heard of CloudBerry, will do some digging on that, is that free too?

[Primus]

Sadly no CloudBerry is a paid for app - about £125 IIRC.

[Killer_Bot]

Looking at our Hyper V Hosts (3 Hosts with 2CPU each)

 

What is the best way of backing up our Virtual Servers?

 

Could i get away with running veeam free to backup our Virtuals or would a paid for solution be better?

 

Also what storage is best to backup up them on to?

 

(Sorry for the random Q's)

 

Sorry to have hijacked your thread for a moment there newpersn. As I've alluded too we're in a similiar position and we're using a computer with a JBOD chassis for storage and Veeam Backup Essentials Enterprise to back up our whole cluster. It's not in place yet so don't have any further advice to offer other than everything I hear about Veeam comes highly recommended. We have a new SAN we're implementing too that offers snapshots and replays so have another form of retention there. The only part we're missing is offsite which I think I'm going to try the CloudBerry/Google Drive route Primus has highlighted.

[round2it]

have a look at altaro vm backup free for 2 vms on one host.

 

I do daily full backups and then use the offsite storage product to do a offsite copy

 

its cheap but works

 

every test I have done has been fine.

it also has the option of boot from backup in the latest version

 

have a go for free

[nicholab]

If your looking for a free cloud backup app have a look at https://www.duplicati.com this only does files.

[colly72]

We use Veeam Backup Essentials here, backing up to multiple NAS drives in physically different parts of the school. Works brilliantly for us.....

[TwistedHelixis]

If your looking for a free cloud backup app have a look at https://www.duplicati.com this only does files.

 

This looks interesting. Have you tested the restore?

[nicholab]

This looks interesting. Have you tested the restore?

 

I have not used the latest version but the company. I used to work for did use the old version on to AWS S3 storage with no issues.