Microsoft Hyper-V Backup and Restore Best Practices
Follow the below 7 rules and you will be well on your way to making sure that your hyper-v backups are safe and secure.
Run Microsoft Best Practices Analyzer (BPA)
Best Practices Analyzer is a server management tool that helps administrators to ensure compliance to best practices in terms of effectiveness, security and reliability. Once Hyper-V is installed, it is best to run the BPA to ensure it is compliant to the pre-defined set of metrics and to fix any non-compliance issues that are generated.
Stay up-to-date on Microsoft patches
Hyper-V has a number of integration services that manage communication between individual VMs and host machines. These integration services need to be correct and in sync on all the VMs without which the backup process will fail. Regularly running patches ensures there are no issues with the integration services.
Test your backup and restore process regularly
Testing your backup for consistency and correctness is as important a process as taking backups. Additionally, it’s important to check your restore process regularly. Check to see if the VMs restart within the expected time-frame and are able to operate as usual.
Limit taking Hyper-V snapshots
The Hyper-V snapshot is different from the VM snapshot taken through VSS. While VSS is taken at a block level and only backs up the disk information, a Hyper-V snapshot creates a snapshot of disk and memory of a VM and creates a separate automatic virtual hard disk (AVHD) file. This can consume a lot of space and hence should be used more for trouble shooting than for backup.
Keep host and guest roles simple
Assigning too many roles to host and guest machines complicates the backup process. Keeping roles simple or even having dedicated roles per VM can make it easier to recover individual VMs and perform granular restores.
Use host backup over guest backup
Host level backup captures the entire state of the VM, which is all of the data required to fully restore the server, including configuration of virtual machines, snapshots of VMs, and hard disks used by the VMs. This is also a more cost effective solution than using guest level backup.
Backup database applications
If your VMs have database applications like SQL server and Exchange Server, then your backup solution should have VSS writer for those database driven applications. Otherwise, the backup becomes inconsistent. If your backup solution does not have a VSS writer for database applications, then you would need to bring those VMs offline before taking backup.
Conclusion
The above best practices can help you efficiently manage your backup process using Hyper-V. As with all backup and restore solutions, the most important practice is to store redundant copies of your data at alternate sites, whether in a cloud or a physically separate location, as a fall-back option during a disaster. It also pays to standardize the backup and recovery process and use recovery checklists that are designed for various failure scenarios. These can be of immense use in bringing up the VMs quickly in the event of a failure.
The post 7 Microsoft Hyper-V Backup Best Practices appeared first on Unitrends Blog.