Backing up Hyper-V - Your preferred methods

[CyBeRkId2002]

Hi all,

 

Just wondered what peoples preferred methods of backing up Hyper-V hosts are? I am thinking specifically Host/Cluster aware backups vs backups from within the guest. For info I am using DPM and so far the only real deal-breaker against Host level is it states file-level restore is only possible from disk-based media. As such we would be limited with our tape-backups to whole VM disk restores.

 

As such I was thinking:

 

Guest level backups of our File Servers

Host backups of everything else

 

Just wondered how others are doing it.

[Steve21]

Veeam all day We don't bother backing up the actual Host, as it doesn't take long to rebuild etc, but everything in the VMs via Veeam

 

Fully cluster aware with backups/restores etc by default

 

Steve

[supportman]

Veeam just the VMs

[kingoranks]

Im using both Altaro (Vms and Physical) and Veeam (Phyiscal server only).

[jthompson]

Veeam here also. A job that backs up the failover cluster itself but not the VMs or cluster shared volumes running on it, and then separate jobs for all of the VMs. The cluster backup job essentially takes the system state of the nodes and thereby the cluster config, so shouldn't take up much space. Data in the cluster shared volumes is going to be accounted for by all of the VM backup jobs, really.

 

I didnt' find it very enjoyable to have to rebuild our cluster when I last did it, 'cos I found it fiddly as.

[Jcx500]

Veeam here

[Jawloms]

Veeam, just the VMs also.

[TwistedHelixis]

I just use Windows server backup, it's been flawless for the past 8 years at all the schools I look after. You can even mount the image and grab single files if needed, or restore the entire VM.

 

Plus, its built into Windows server

[Oaktech]

N-Able - Just the VMs.

[colly72]

Veeam here too, wouldn't be without it.

[slugshead]

veeam too

 

as others have said, no point in the physical, quicker to do a fresh install if one fails

[jthompson]

I'd have thought you may as well give yourself the option, at least, and take backups of the nodes.

[mbedford]

+1 Veeam. To be honest, most questions that involve the words backing up and VM's are going to have the answer of Veeam...

[jthompson]

N-Able - Just the VMs.

 

We're trialling N-able at the moment, too, to supplement our Veeam backups.

[Chaniel]

Veeam and N-Able (previously Solarwinds...) for off-site backups.

[mcolbourn]

Another happy Veeam user, we just backup the VM's not the hosts

[Sonic007]

I just export the VM's out of HyperV.

Very easy to restore.

I found Windows Server Backup took too long.

[hallb15]

Altaro here, just the VMs. It's deduplication and compression features work really well.

Granular file restore is also very good.

[ITGURU]

Those with Cluster setups, what's your Backup plan for SAN / Storage failure? Do you use Replication too?

[Steve21]

Those with Cluster setups, what's your Backup plan for SAN / Storage failure? Do you use Replication too?

 

Short-term wise? Instant recovery via Veeam/HyperV on the backup server for the key servers

 

Long term wise, warranty/full restore etc

 

Steve

[jthompson]

Ditto. As much next business day warranty cover as possible for the hardware.