Redstor and HyperV Backups

[synaesthesia]

Not sure if this is best suited to Cloud Services for the cloud backup, or Windows for HyperV so please move if necessary!

 

Anyway, after a tweak of our server estate I'm looking at how our Redstor is set up. Previously we were clustered, so were unable to use Redstor to backup hyperV VM's natively. Now we can.

Redstor's guides state not to double up the backups but it's wise to back up via the host hypervisor and only back up individual VM's if you are going to need file level restoration. That makes sense to me - so I'd exclude our file server from the hypervisor backup and have the ESE installed on that VM.

However this is where it gets a bit murky and wondered if anyone knew the party line

 

So in Redstor console, the HyperV tab lists all the detected VMs. I can right click and exclude the file server. 

What it doesn't do however is exclude the files - so if I then go to the File tab, the necessary folders for the VM and the VHDs are not excluded and nowhere does it appear to state they should be.

Should I exclude them manually?

I did somewhat over-complicate the best-practice, so I have the VMs and snapshots stored on a separate drive to paging files and VHDs, but I don't think that makes a difference. 

 

[DavR]

Slightly different scenario here, but same desired outcome. We have Redstor installed on our Hyper-V host, we backup all our production VMs from the host side, but I exclude my testing VMs from the backup.

 

In short though, yes, we exclude the VM, and then go into the file structure and exclude the Virtual Disks as well. The actual VM files that are just GUID numbers I don't bother excluding, because those aren't big enough to make much difference. 

[synaesthesia]

Cheers, glad I'm making some sort of sense!

[Tefters]

Afternoon boys,

 

Looks like we all end up at the same destination eventually! 🤣

My Veeam and Wasabi licensing is expiring and I was looking into Redstor a while ago and had a demo with them online. While some things looked nice and simple, I was a little disappointed with their on-prem Windows server offerings.

 

So I have a 2-node S2D Hyper-V cluster running on CSV storage. In their knowledge library, I find conflicting documents on the support for this scenario. If I go with the latter I just read, it's that they support this now if you install on the Hyper-V host and do a FSB, but that will just back up the VHD's and not the actual VM config? Also, you cant do a file-level restore from an FSB so for that scenario you would need to install the agent into the VM at the guest level and then could only restore to a working machine?

 

How does this also play out when it comes to application-aware backups/restores like SQL?

[Tefters]

@DavR @synaesthesia Just wanted to clarify that you are backing up VM's in a hyper-v cluster where the disks are hosted on a CSV and this works?

[synaesthesia]

That's how I had it up until Christmas, and we had to do it separately too - so I had the host backed up but excluding the CSV so I had the config files backed up, and then each guest backed up separately.

Yes, that did mean that restores file-level were to a working machine so you needed a blank-slate to restore to but I'm sure it was possible to do a bare-metal. I never got the chance to test however as I got rid of the cluster and SAN setup entirely at Christmas.

[Tefters]

4 minutes ago, synaesthesia said:

That's how I had it up until Christmas, and we had to do it separately too - so I had the host backed up but excluding the CSV so I had the config files backed up, and then each guest backed up separately.

Yes, that did mean that restores file-level were to a working machine so you needed a blank-slate to restore to but I'm sure it was possible to do a bare-metal. I never got the chance to test however as I got rid of the cluster and SAN setup entirely at Christmas.

You got rid of your cluster?

[synaesthesia]

Yeah, was overkill (and slow, HDD based SAN) for what we used it for. Single host now running 8 guests on SSD's and it's a million times better (with a hot-spare host ready to go in case of failure).

 

[Tefters]

8 minutes ago, synaesthesia said:

Yeah, was overkill (and slow, HDD based SAN) for what we used it for. Single host now running 8 guests on SSD's and it's a million times better (with a hot-spare host ready to go in case of failure).

 

Awww that makes sense.

 

Redstor's documentation is so conflicting when it comes to CSV's, one part says they don't support it, and another says they do in a round about way:

 

1370 - Cluster Shared Volume support in ESE and Full System Recovery : Redstor Help Center - Bullet points 3 and 3 saying not supported
1397 - How to backup and recover Hyper-V virtual machines : Redstor Help Center - Bullet point 3 under the "How to Recover" section

[synaesthesia]

Those ring a bell and probably goes some way to explaining why I thought it might be possible. 

Just searched through my history with Redstor support and that first link came up to say it's not supported, which they said specifically in writing. Advised to back up the host, excluding the systemstate, VM files and quorum drive as well as the CSV.

[Tefters]

9 minutes ago, synaesthesia said:

Those ring a bell and probably goes some way to explaining why I thought it might be possible. 

Just searched through my history with Redstor support and that first link came up to say it's not supported, which they said specifically in writing. Advised to back up the host, excluding the systemstate, VM files and quorum drive as well as the CSV.

Yeah, I had a demo online and they lightly glossed over it as "possible" but I wanted to understand the full process before committing to a purchase.

Like i said above, reading these documents I read it as: Install agent on hyper-v host > backup VM's and it will backup the flat VHDX files > Restore will restore the VHDX files. Simple enough. But for the VM configs its either write all the details down or backup the hyper-v host and remove the CSV / VHDX's from that backup. I'd probably end up going down the write VM configs in backup docs approach to be honest.

 

As for servers where I need to do file level restores I need to exempt them from the Hyper-V backup and installed an agent in the guest.

 

Its all bloody clunky to be honest and I usually wouldn't consider this at all over the likes of Veeam which is full cluster aware etc... but I need to backup O365 and Entra without restrictions and without costing 9k+ 

 

Ow and my cluster hosts are no GUI so i don't know how that would affect things and whether I would need to look into enabling the GUI #facepalm

Edited March 12 by Tefters

[synaesthesia]

Indeed - I must admit to being a huge fan of Veeam and was sad to see it go for us

[DavR]

I've only ever used Redstor with a single Hyper-V host with storage on the same server, so I've not much to contribute to that debate. 

 

What I will say though, is that I've kept Veeam as an on site backup, as it's not costing us much. As discussed, it's a much nicer product for backing up VMs!

[Tefters]

Thank guys.

 

Time to go hammer Redstor for some clarifications around this.

 

Might also have to look into Acronis as well then as they seem to support CSV and clusters natively.

[synaesthesia]

Is it possible to use Redstor akin to other cloud storage without their native software? i.e. add it to Veeam as a repository?

[Tefters]

1 minute ago, synaesthesia said:

Is it possible to use Redstor akin to other cloud storage without their native software? i.e. add it to Veeam as a repository?

Was wondering the same, that would be classed as a S3 storage bucket much like I have Wasabi at the moment. I think the answer is no but its worth an ask.