Backing Up Hyper-V Virtual Servers - FOR FREE !! with the VSS Writer

[burgemaster]

Over the last week or so I have been looking at systems to backup our Hyper-V virtual servers.

 

I have been trialing Data Protection Manager but found that there is only Local disk or Tape support.

We cannot afford to buy 600gig of ScSi drives, a tape system or upgrade Backup-Exec from 11 to 12.5 and then ALSO buy the hyper-v Agent. Also now firestreamer is around £400 to buy.

 

So.. while looking for solutions ive seen talk of being able to do "Online backups" of any hyper-v OS using the VSS writer. Currently we backup the whole Host using Windows Backup, but what we would want to do it backup and restore individual Virtual Servers

 

This looks like it has to be done from the command line (or script?) but as as its free I wouldnt mind giving it a shot...

 

Has any here managed to get this working?

 

From what ive gathered it is possible to backup all the VHDs to a shared drive while the servers are still running.

 

Apart from the obvious extra work involved in running and schedualling, does anyone know any negatives with just having backups of the VCDs? Does DPM2010 backup anything more than just the VHDs ?

 

A couple of the sites below have scripts

Command line backup of running Hyper-V images using Volume Shadow Copies (VSS) and Diskshadow.exe - Server Fault

 

Orange Deuce Rider: Online Backup of Hyper-V Virtual Machines - Part 2

[alexp]

You can find on hypervbackup.codeplex.com an open source tool to perform VSS based hyper-v backups.

[Rozzer]

I bought a Lacie Big5 storage which has 10TB of storage for £800 and because it has iSCSI I was able to connect it to my DPM server. Works a treat and I barely need to monitor my backups now a days. Backup solution came to £1200 but backups up my entire network. Exchange, SQL, Files, Virtual Machines. I also setup a replica in another building which was quite easy. I know its money but I say backups are just as important as the data the servers are stored on!

[Eben]

@Ross2k5 have you setup a second DPM server for the replication or just remote storage in the other building?