Symantec Backup Exec for Windows available with Hyper-V support

re: Symantec Backup Exec for Windows available with Hyper-V support

Jason — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:44:51 GMT

I'm confused here. I'm running Backup Exec 12.0 on a physical server, and it seems to be backing up my two running Hyper-V servers fine.

Is the only advantage in 12.5 that you can restore individual files within the virtual machines without having to restore the whole image and then open it with a program like WinImage?

re: Symantec Backup Exec for Windows available with Hyper-V support

sj — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 02:45:07 GMT

how are you backing up your VMs from the host, you're running Backup on the VHDs while they are running? If so, thats not a good idea, it can mess with the VHDs

re: Symantec Backup Exec for Windows available with Hyper-V support

Jason — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 03:31:55 GMT

sj: Well since Backup Exec 12.0 supported VSS, I believed that it would have no trouble backing up a Hyper-V image that was running. I have had a daily backup going for probably more than a week now, and so far I have not seen any sign of trouble.

During the backup process, the event log in the virtual machine shows the "Virtual Disk Service" starting and stopping a number of times, but they are not errors. I thought that was by-design.

I know what happens if you try to backup a running Virtual Server 2005 image using Backup Exec 11d. The virtual machine may blue-screen (though I have never seen any data loss result from that). My strategy for backing up those virtual machines was to have the backup program run a script which shuts them down before the backup, and starts them back up after the backup is finished.

But like I said earlier, I thought (and am still not convinced otherwise) that Backup Exec 12.0 along with Hyper-V could back up running virtual machine images with no trouble. This is something I really want to clear up soon though, before I get too much stuff running from Hyper-V virtual machines.

re: Symantec Backup Exec for Windows available with Hyper-V support

Virtual PC Guy — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 10:18:09 GMT

Jason -

With Backup Exec 12.5 you can now select to backup specific virtual machines - and restore them as you mention. 12.0 will perform a complete system backup correctly.

Cheers,

Ben

re: Symantec Backup Exec for Windows available with Hyper-V support

Eyal — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 18:55:06 GMT

EMC's Networker Module for Microsoft Applications (NMM) v2.1 also supports Hyper-V backup both VSS HW and SW snapshos.

CONFUSION

Jeff N — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 02:52:46 GMT

I'm confused about restoring an online backup of a Virtual Machine. Using BackupExec's new 12.5 agent, the online backup works just fine, but when I restore the virtual from tape, it restores to a shutdown-state -- i.e., it was backed-up running, but restores in a shutdown state. Often the VM also generates an EventID 6008 - the previous shutdown was not expected. Is this a problem restoring the VM in a different state than when it was backed up ?

Thanks for the help !