Best practices, VSS process in details and the 3 things you need to ensure for your Hyper-V disaster recovery are discussed in this session with Greg Shields.

1. Best Practices for
Hyper-V Backups
Greg Shields, MVP
Senior Partner
Concentrated Technology
www.ConcentratedTech.com
@ConcentratdGreg

2. About the speaker
 Over 15 years of Windows experience.
● Administrator – Managed environments ranging from a few dozen to
many thousands of users…
● Consultant – Hands-on and Strategic…
● Speaker – TechMentor, Tech Ed, Windows Connections, MMS,
VMworld, ISACA, others…
● Analyst/Author – Fourteen books and counting…
● Columnist – TechNet Magazine, Redmond Magazine,
Windows IT Pro Magazine, TechTarget Online, others…
● All-around good guy…

3. Honesty Moment: This Isn’t Fun.
 Hyper-V backups are not as trivial as they might seem.
● Hyper-V host requires backup
● Virtual machines require backup
● Files inside VMs require backup
● System State requires backup
 Bad decisions mean Hyper-V backups might not back
up with the granularity you might need.
● “I need to grab a file off a VM.”
● “I need to restore a SQL database or a database row in a VM.”
● “I need to recover an individual email from Exchange.”
● “I need to bring back a VM from a specific point in time.”

4. Your Steps in Constructing the Right Solution
1. Determine what you want to backup.
● Files and folders?
● Applications?
● Entire virtual machines?
2. Determine from where you want to backup.
● Virtualization introduces “perspective” with backups.
3. Determine how you want to backup.
● Understanding backups means understanding VSS.
4. Determine with what will you backup.
● Native tools?
● Third-party solutions?

5. Step 1: What do you want to backup?
 Virtualization adds to the number of objects that could
potentially be backed up.
● Files Files and Folders
● Folders
● Application objects Applications
● Applications
● Operating systems
Operating System
● Virtual machines
● Virtual host
● Virtual cluster Hypervisor
Virtual Host
Storage

6. Hyper-V is Unique: The vSphere Architecture

7. Hyper-V is Unique: The Hyper-V Architecture

8. Step 2: From Where do you want to backup?
“Perspectives”

9. Perspective Drives Backup Agent Location
Agent in the
Primary Partition

10. Perspective Drives Backup Agent Location
Agent inside the
Virtual Machine

11. Perspective Drives Backup Agent Location
Agent within the
Storage Layer

12. Perspective Drives Backup Agent Location
Cluster Aware
Agent

13. Some Perspectives Can’t Deliver
 Greater granularity with some perspectives.
 Less granularity with others.
 Less backup/restore effort with some perspectives.
 More backup/restore effort with others.
 Some perspectives can’t deliver on
what you want to backup.

14. Step 3: How do you want to backup?
 Backing up just files and folders is easy.
 Everything else requires the assistance of the Microsoft
Volume Shadow Copy Service, VSS.
● Originally used to create volume snapshots for user self-service
restores. Remember the “Previous Versions” client?
● Now a major component of all application-aware backups.

15. VSS Enables the How
 VSS is a Windows service that interacts with installed
applications…
● …to inform applications that a backup is about to occur.
● …to report when the backup is complete.
● …to instruct applications to perform post-backup tasks such as
truncating logs and cleanup activities.
 The first job of VSS is quiescence.
● Quiescence = “quieting”.
● Coordinates backup jobs with applications to ensure successful
backups without data corruption.
 The second job of VSS is coordination.
● Between applications, their data, and backup activities.
● Between backups and storage.

16. VSS Enables the How
 VSS is used when transactional-based applications
installed to Windows servers require backups.
● Exchange, SQL, AD, Oracle, others…
 Virtual machines are a kind of transactional-based
application.
● Virtual machines require quiescence for proper backup.
● Think of VHD files like little transactional databases.
● If anything changes in that database while you’re backing it up, you’ll
end up with corruption.
● Things are constantly changing in VDK files!

17. VSS’ Three Components, Single Server
VSS Writer VSS Requestor
Microsoft Exchange
Backup Application
SQL Server Volume Shadow
Oracle Copy Service
Active Directory
Others...
VSS Provider
Operating System
Storage Array
Disk Volume

18. VSS’ Three Components, Hyper-V
Virtual Machine
VSS Writer
Microsoft Exchange
Etc...
VSS Writer VSS Requestor
Windows Server
Hyper-V Writer
Volume Shadow Backup
Copy Service
VSS Provider
Operating System
Storage Array
Disk Volume

19. Disk Types Impact Backups
 Hyper-V can support many different types of disks.
Different types require different backup approaches.
● Fixed-size VHDs
● Dynamically expanding VHDs
● Passthrough Disks
● iSCSI Direct Disks

20. Step 4: With what do you want to backup?
 Your options abound…
● Windows Server Backup
● Everything Else

21. Windows Server Backup, a Minimal Solution
 Windows Server Backup is Microsoft’s native solution
for backing up Windows Server 2008/R2 and Hyper-V.
● Disk-to-disk backup solution.
● Designed for small environments, limited uses.
● Single-server focus.
● Disk Volume focus.
● No direct restorability for VMs.
● No direct restorability for files.
● No direct restorability for application objects.

22. VM Backup via Windows Server Backup
 Register the Hyper-V VSS Writer with WSB.
● Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
● Locate the following registry key:
− HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows
NTCurrentVersion
● Right-click CurrentVersion, point to New, and then click Key.
● Type WindowsServerBackup, and then press ENTER.
● Right-click WindowsServerBackup, point to New, and then click Key.
● Type Application Support, and then press ENTER.
● Right-click Application Support, point to New, and then click Key.
● Type {66841CD4-6DED-4F4B-8F17-FD23F8DDC3DE}, and then press
ENTER.
● Right-click {66841CD4-6DED-4F4B-8F17-FD23F8DDC3DE}, point to
New, and then click String Value.
● Type Application Identifier, and then press ENTER.
● Right-click Application Identifier, and then click Modify.
● In the Value data box, type Hyper-V, and then click OK.
● On the File menu, click Exit.

23. VM Backup via Windows Server Backup

24. WSB’s Idiosyncrasies
 WSB must back up all volumes hosting VM files.
● If VM configuration files are on the D: volume…
● …and the VHD files are on the E: volume…
● …then you must back up both the D: and E: volumes.
 WSB can either dedicate a drive to backups, or it will
overwrite old data with each backup.
 WSB cannot restore individual VMs.
 Cluster Shared Volumes cannot be backed up by WSB.
 VMs that contain two or more snapshots will not be
automatically restored.
● Requires manual intervention.

25. VSS’ Idiosyncrasies
 Disk types impact backups!
● Passthrough disks cannot be backed up by the Hyper-V VSS writer.
● iSCSI Direct LUNs cannot be backed up by the Hyper-V VSS writer.
● iSCSI LUNs attached to the primary partition can be backed up.
● VMs that contain dynamic disks must be backed up offline.
 Saved State backups will cause periods of downtime.
● Saved State backups occur when VMs don’t meet VSS requirements.
− Missing Integration Services
− Running OSs that lack VSS support
● Saved State downtime occurs during VSS snapshot creation.

26. Third Party Solutions, or,
“What WSB Got Wrong”
 Boy, they sure didn’t make it easy.
● Granular backup and restore.
● Minutes of RTO, not “from yesterday”.
● Changed block tracking
● Deduplication, and compression.
● Consolidation of perspectives.
− One solution for restoring files, folders, application objects,
and virtual machines.
− One solution for backing up data, irrespective of disk type,
connection, or location.
● Dead simplicity.

27. Best Practices for
Hyper-V Backups
Greg Shields, MVP
Senior Partner
Concentrated Technology
www.ConcentratedTech.com
@ConcentratdGreg

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