Hi all,<\/p>\n
You might have seen our solution for Hyper-V Backups \u2013 which involves imaging the host, and using the BackupAssist Granular Restore console to be able to \u201cdig down\u201d into the backups and into the guests to retrieve individual files and folders.<\/p>\n
However, I have been asked the question, \u201cwhat if I only want to protect one or two VMs\u201d?
\nAnother client even posed the scenario \u2013 \u201cI have a standby server, and want to copy the VMs from my main server to standby server every day, so should something go wrong, I can flick a switch and run the VMs on the standby.\u201d<\/p>\n
The important file to copy across is the VHD file \u2013 the virtual hard disk of the Guest VM. If you copy that across to another location \u2013 either your backup device or a standby server \u2013 then you will have a valid backup and snapshot of the Guest VM.<\/p>\n
However, a normal copy program won\u2019t do, because it isn\u2019t VSS aware, and won\u2019t tell Hyper-V to commit itself. However, the BackupAssist File Replication Engine is VSS aware and Hyper-V aware, and can certainly be used to protect individual VMs by copying the VHD files.<\/p>\n
1.\tSet up a File Replication job
\n2.\tUse the Mirror scheme if you only want to keep the last copy, or a scheme with history
\n3.\tSelect the appropriate VHDs to replicate.
\n4.\tIn the Open Files tab, you need to enable the VSS writers (so Hyper-V is properly committed for backup)<\/p>\n
Additionally if you are backing up to a standby server:<\/p>\n
5.\tThe destination path of the VHDs will be important. In the Replication options, you need to uncheck the \u201cuse full path\u201d option so that we don\u2019t put the VHD into a special path based on the source directory.<\/p>\n
When setting up the destination, then you need to be careful to specify the destination directory accurately so that the VHD goes into the correct location. Our File Replication Engine will use the common \u201croot\u201d path \u2013 for example, if there are the source files:
\nC:\\one\\two\\three.txt
\nc:\\one\\apple\\banana.txt<\/p>\nThen on the destination, you\u2019ll get:
\n\u2026.destination path\\two\\three.txt
\n\u2026.destination path\\apple\\banana.txt<\/p><\/blockquote>\n6.\tNow, on the standby Hyper-V server, you\u2019ll need to create another copy of the virtual machine with identical settings. This is because it\u2019s not possible to copy the VM settings from the original Hyper-V Host to the secondary host \u2013 it\u2019s only possible to copy the VHD. I wrote more about this here: http:\/\/www.backupassist.com\/blog\/support\/granular-individual-vm-restore-of-hyper-v-virtual-machine-from-backup\/<\/p>\n
If you are backing up to a backup device, then you need to be aware of your restore options:
\n–\tRestore to the same Host \u2013 copy the VHD back
\n–\tRestore to a different Host \u2013 copy the VHD to new host and create a new VM, using the existing VHD as the hard disk
\n–\tPlease see http:\/\/www.backupassist.com\/blog\/support\/granular-individual-vm-restore-of-hyper-v-virtual-machine-from-backup\/<\/p>\nNote: These instructions assume that Hyper-V Snapshots are not used! We recommend against using Hyper-V Snapshots as they can impact performance, and they are not a real backup. However, if you do have snapshots, you need to back up and restore all the VHD files (and the AVHD files, which are differencing hard disks).<\/p>\n
I hope this helps!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"