Advanced backup options for Hyper-V 2012 R2 on Veeam

Some questions that come up again and again are advanced backup features in Hyper-V using Veeam. How does Veeam take backup from a Hyper-V host?

in a simple day to day virtual machine life, the read & writes consist of I/O traffic from a virtual machines to a VHD/VHDX. Residing on a network share. SAN/SMB and such.

When we setup Veeam to take backup of a virtual machine, what will happen is the following. First thing is that Veeam will trigger a snapshot using the Hyper-V Integration Services Shadow Copy Provider on that particular Hyper-V host that the virtual machine resides on. What will happen is that a AVHDX. This can either be done using an hardware VSS provier or software VSS provider.

A hardware provider manages shadow copies at the hardware level by working in conjunction with a hardware storage adapter or controller. A software provider manages shadow copies by intercepting I/O requests at the software level between the file system and the volume manager. The number of VMs in a group is limite depending on VSS provider. For a software VSS provider — 4 VMs, for a hardware VSS provider — 8 VMs.

NOTE: Using Offhost-proxy, requires an storage solution which supports an hardware transferrable shadow copies against a SAN. If we for instance use SMB based storage for Hyper-V we do not require this –> http://helpcenter.veeam.com/backup/hyperv/smb_off-host_backup.html

Using onhost backup, means that the transport role will be using on a Hyper-V host which has access to the running virtual machines.

Make sure that the integration services and running and up to date before doing online backup, you can check this from Hyper-V PowerShell –> Get-VM | FT Name, IntegrationServicesVersion
More troubleshooting on interation services here –> https://www.veeam.com/kb1855

So what will happen in a online backup is (If all the requirements are meet)

1: Veeam will interact with the Hyper-V host VSS service and request backup of the specific VM

2: The VSS writer on the hyper-v host will then forward the reques tto the Hyper-V Integration components inside the VM guest OS

3: The integration components will then communicate with the VSS framework inside the guest OS and request backup of all VSS-aware application inside the VM

4: The VSS writers of application aware VSS will then get application data suiteable for backup

5: After the applications are quiesced the VSS inside the Virtual machine takes an internal snapshot using the software based VSS

6: The integration service component notifices the Hypervisor that the VM is ready for backup, and Hyper-V will then take a snapshot of the volume which the Virtual machine is located on. Then a AVHDX file will be generated, all WRITES will be redirected there.

7: The volume snapshot is presented to Veeam either using Off-host or on-host backup. (If the Off-host proxy is not available it will fallback to on-host proxy on a designeted host)

8: Data will then be processed on the proxy server and then be moved to the repository

NOTE: Off-host setup requires an dedicated Hyper-V host (It requires Hyper-V to have access to the VSS providers) and in case of using Off-host it cannot be part of the Hyper-V cluster, and make sure it has READ only access to the LUN and that your storage vendors supports readable shadow volume copies.

On-host backup will use the Veeam transport service on the Hyper-V machine. If the volume is placed on a CSV volume, the CSV Software Shadow Copy Provider will be used for the snapshot creation process.

NOTE: During the backup process, Veeam will try to use its own CBT driver on Hyper-V host to make sure that it only takes backup of only the changed blocks. (Since Hyper-V does not natively provide CBT, this will change in Windows Server 2016)

NOTE: If CBT is not working on Veeam run the command Reset-HvVmChangeTracking PowerShell cmdlet http://helpcenter.veeam.com/backup/80/powershell/reset-hvvmchangetracking.html, or if the virtual machines are being shut down during backup process, try to disable ODX)

If Change block tracking is not enabled or not working as it should, the backup proxy will copy the virtual machine and use Veeam’s proprietary filtering mechanism. so Instead of tracking changed blocks of data, Veeam Backup & Replication filters out unchanged data blocks. During backup, Veeam Backup & Replication consolidates virtual disk content, scans through the VM image and calculates a checksum for every data block. Checksums are stored as metadata to backup files next to VM data.

So what about the more advanced features for Hyper-V

• Enable Hyper-V guest quiescene

In case of application aware, The VM OS is suspsended and the content of the system memory and CPU is written to a dump file, in order to be able to perserve the data integrity of files with for instance transactional applications (This is known as offline backup)

Note that using this feature Veeam will not be able to perform application tasks like

• Applying application-specific settings to prepare applications for VSS-aware restore at the next VM startup
• Truncating transaction logs after successful backup or replication.
• Take Crach consistent backup instead of suspending VM

If you do not want to suspend the virtual machine during backup, you can use crach consistent backup instead of suspending the virtual machine. This is equal to a hard reset of a virtual machine, this does not involve any downtime to a virtual machine but it does not preserve the data integrity of open files and may result in data loss.

• Use changed block tracking data

Use the Veeam filter driver to look at changed blocks before data is copied to the offhost-veeam proxy or on-host proxy to the repository

• Allow Processing of multiple VMs with a single volume snapshot

If you have multiple virtual machines within the same job, this feature will help reduce the load on the Hyper-V hosts.As this will trigger a volume snapshot for mulitple machines instead of a single virtual machine.

NOTE: The virtual machines much be located on the same host and must reside on a file share which uses the same VSS provider.

This is the first post of series – Veeam post and Hyper-V processing.

#backup, #hyper-v, #veeam

Veeam under panseret

I dag finnes det et hav av muligheter når det gjelder backup, fokuset har skiftet I stor grad fra å kunne ta backup av kun fysiske maskiner til å kunne backup av fysiske, virtuelle og applikasjoner som ligger på maskinene (som SQL, Mail, Intraweb, fagapplikasjoner) Løsningene har fått høyere krav på seg I forhold til å håndtere store mengder data, samtidig som den skal være enkel i bruk og være kjapp til å kunne tilbakeføre data.

Det finnes mange forskjellige leverandører av backup programvare på markedet, for å nevne noen:
Altoro http://www.altaro.com/hyper-v-backup/
Acronis http://www.acronis.com/backup-recovery/enterprise.html#agents-windows
Microsoft DPM http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh758173.aspx
Dell Appasure http://www.appassure.com/
Symantec Backup Exec 2012 http://www.symantec.com/products/data-backup-software
IBM TSM http://www-142.ibm.com/software/products/us/en/tivostormana/

Så har man Veeam:
Forskjellen med Veeam I forhold til de andre produsentene er at de fokuserer kun på det virtuelle laget, dermed vil man få en skreddersydd løsning som kun er rettet mot virtuell infrastruktur.
Veeam har også nylig lansert en ny utgave av sitt hovedprodukt Backup and Replication i versjon 6.5 som introduserer en del ny funksjonalitet og støtte for nye produkter, de har blant annet kommet med støtte for Windows Server 2012 og VMware vSphere 5.1, som gjør at de var først ute med støtte for disse nye produktene.  For de som ikke kjenner så godt til Veeam, så kan man lese litt mer om dem her –> http://www.veeam.com/company/about.html?ad=menu

Veeam har følgende programvare i sin portefølje:

Veeam Backup and Replication (Som er hovedproduktet til Veeam, brukes til backup og replikering av virtuelle maskiner (støtte for VMware og Hyper-V) pluss mye mer. Den har også egne verktøy for backup og gjenoppretting mot
Exchange,AD og SQL) Hørest ut som et vanlig backup produkt, men den har en del funksjonalitet som gjør den unik I forhold til konkurrentene Jeg kommer inn på det senere. Du kan lese mer om produktet her  http://bit.ly/SdvvAF

Veeam ONE (Som er et komplett overvåkningsverktøy for overvåkning av Hyper-V og Vmware, den har også innebygget rapporteringsverktøy)
Du kan lese mer om det her  http://bit.ly/TuYqU8

Veeam Management Pack (Som er et tilleggsprodukt (Management Pack) til System Center Operations Manager gir deg full overvåkning av din VMware infrastruktur i Operations Manager)
Tidligere også kalt nWorks Management Pack. Du kan lese mer om det her  http://bit.ly/Rtb5Gk

I tillegg har de også noen andre produkter:

Veeam Backup Free Edition (Som er en minimal utgave av Backup and Replication som er mest brukt til å ta kopi av virtuelle maskiner og komprimere dem via VeeamZIP)

Veeam One Free Edition (Er en minimal utgave av Veeam One og har en del restriksjoner i forhold til hvor lenge den kan lagre data)

I løpet av de neste dagene vil jeg skrive mer om hvordan Veeam Backup and Replication fungerer under «panseret»
Hvordan man setter det opp mot sin infrastruktur. Hva de forskjellige tjenestene er for noe og hvordan de ulike komponentene fungerer sammen.
Stay tuned!

#backup, #hyper-v, #veeam, #vmware

Backup site servers in SCCM 2012

A bit hidden in SCCM 2012 is the ability to backup site servers in Configuration Manager with a schedule, open the console go to administration –> site configuration –> sites –> settings –> Site Maintance

From there you choose “Backup Sites Servers” and now you choose a backup location and set a schedule –>

If you enable an alert for backup task, it will appear in the monitoring tab

So if an error should occur during the backup, you can see it in the Overview tab in the monitoring pane. You can also view the logs for further info found under smsbkup.log

This backup includes, the database, logs, inboxes.

#backup, #configmgr, #configration-manager-2012, #sccm