MrLizard Posted August 17, 2009 Share Posted August 17, 2009 Hi all, i know there are some geeks out there and i was wondering if i could pick your brains for a minute. I have two servers, both running server 2008 Hyper-v Server 1 has server 2008 as host environment and sbs2008 & Server 2003 in two virtual instances Server 2 has Server 2008 as the host environment running hyper-v with one 2008 server running Terminal services on it I need a backup strategy for this, i have a budget of around £2k, what I would like to acheive is a system where if one of the host machines were to fail i could bring it back quickly onto the other server machine. Both servers are specced with the fact that either one could potentially run all 3 servers at once, both servers hardware are exactly the same and have been specced with hyper-v in mind, both on 64bit. So far i have looked at acronis, which for £1k will give me the ability to backup files or images of one host machine and all 3 virtual machines, potentially sending the images to the opposite machine, sounds great. So really im wondering if anyone has done this before, and if whether im making this more complicated than it needs to be... Can i just simply copy the .vhd files and snapshot images from one machine to the next, is there a way of importing in hyper-v like there used to be in vmware. ive been trying to get in touch with symantec backup exec to see if they do anything similar but their support is useless. Ta Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3FIDDYZ Posted August 17, 2009 Share Posted August 17, 2009 Will have a word with one of our vmware bods for you... Be right back with you! M Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrLizard Posted August 17, 2009 Author Share Posted August 17, 2009 thanks m8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3FIDDYZ Posted August 17, 2009 Share Posted August 17, 2009 Answer from one of the guys that I thought did it , just waiting for one of the others to come back to me! "Hmm, I don't do much with backup personally, but Backup Exec should do the job but I have no idea on cost. You can export and import virtual machines in hyper-v, quick google for "hyper-v import virtual machine" reveals lots of help such as http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/ar ... art-1.aspx As an interim (if he has enough space on the servers) it may be possible to periodically export from one server to the other so that the files are available in case of a physical server failure." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BRO-T Posted August 17, 2009 Share Posted August 17, 2009 Hi m8, From what i can gather, you can simply backup the virtual server file located on the host server. then restore it to another host server if required. We use Arcserve and simply backup these files daily. But backup exec should work just as well. Hope thats clear Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrLizard Posted August 17, 2009 Author Share Posted August 17, 2009 yes this all makes sense, im still researching but an assortment of the above seems to make sense. acronis offers a nice additional feature that will let you manage the whole process as well as restoring individual files from the virtual instances from the host server, but you do pay for it.... testing should be happening tomorrow. ta Steve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Walbertonio Posted August 17, 2009 Share Posted August 17, 2009 Haven't seen the Microsoft effort in action, but I assume it must have some kind of snapshot functionality? We use vRanger which essentially takes a snapshot, compresses it and pops it to an attached drive. Can do all this via script tbh, so don't discount the cost saving of a 2tb drive or somesuch and a little scheduled task. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrLizard Posted August 18, 2009 Author Share Posted August 18, 2009 snapshot works great but without some of the cfg files you cant just import the snapshot onto another physical box, i have gone forward and back in time with snapshots though on the same box and works flawlessl.y Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pyn888 Posted August 18, 2009 Share Posted August 18, 2009 we use backup exec avoid arcserv at all costs also avoid NT backup(windows built in one) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrLizard Posted August 18, 2009 Author Share Posted August 18, 2009 can backup exec do the virtual instances onto another server easily? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WoREoD Posted August 18, 2009 Share Posted August 18, 2009 For the SBS server ...... I've used the built-in Backup and it works fine. We've tested it to both restore the whole server (to new hardware) and to just pull down files we wanted to recover....... not sure if this helps! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SunGodRA Posted August 18, 2009 Share Posted August 18, 2009 Advise against tape backup - its not reliable and relies on human intervention (do you really want to trust your data to a glorified VCR - the technology is 10 years out of date) Either get a nearline backup device like a SonicWall CDP (continuous data protection) or go for an online/offsite solution (charged at approx £1.50/gb/month - PDF here http://www.crosstek.it/pdfs/datasentry.pdf If however you need true failover, the best product on the market is 'Double Take' - but this will be well over your budget! http://www.doubletake.com/uk/products/d ... cture.aspx I sell all these solutions if interested Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SunGodRA Posted August 18, 2009 Share Posted August 18, 2009 can backup exec do the virtual instances onto another server easily? Version 12.5 of backup exec does support VMware Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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