Vembu: Backing Up Your Hyper-V Environment
Ben Liebowitz
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I’ve blogged about Vembu and backing up your VMware Environment, but I haven’t talked about Hyper-V yet. So I spun up a Nested Hyper-V Server in my lab to see how Vembu works with backing up Hyper-V!
First, as you can see in the screenshot below, I deployed a single Windows 2019 Server and installed Hyper-V. I configured the network switch and the storage. After that, I deployed two VMs. One VM is running Windows Server 2016 and the other Windows Server 2019. The first one is running Windows 2016 mostly because I copied the wrong ISO locally and didn’t feel like waiting to copy the other one. While the first one installed Windows, I copied the 2019 ISO. 🙂
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Next, lets jump into Vembu and setup the backup job! The first step, logging in to Vembu!
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First, we have to add our HyperV host. Click Data-Sources – Add Microsoft Hyper-V – Hyper-V Servers (Standalone)
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Next, we have to click ADD MICROSOFT HYPER-V]
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As I’m running a stand-alone Hyper-V server, I choose that type and filled in the Hyper-V Server name and assigned a credential.
*** The Credential used must be the same credentials used for the Vembu Service. ***
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Vembu will install a small agent on the target Hyper-V Server.
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It may take several minutes for Vembu to install the agent. Eventually, you’ll see a confirmation message.
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If you refresh the page, you’ll see your server added.
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Next, we click BACKUP – CONFIGURE BACKUP – MICROSOFT HYPER-V
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Next, we’ll give the job a name, choose the Repository and a job description. Click NEXT.
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On the left, you’ll see the Hyper-V Host that we added above. If you expand, you’ll see the VMs also. Select which ones you want to backup and click NEXT.
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I have no Exclusions, so I will just click NEXT. However, if you didn’t want to backup one of the VMs on your host, you can exclude it here.
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Next, you can select any Disk Exclusions. Say if you had a D drive for your system swap file and didn’t want that backed up, you can exclude it here. If not, click NEXT.
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On the Guest Processing section, you can configure Application Aware Processing, Log Truncation, and File Exclusions. If not, click NEXT.
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Next we’ll setup the backup schedule. I’m choosing daily backups at 6am.
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I’m also going to setup Synthetic Full backups to run on Sundays at 9pm.
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On the Settings page, I’ll enable retention for Incremental Backup and set it to retain 3 versions.
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Finally, choose if you want Encryption and if so provide a key.
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Lastly, review your new backup job and click SAVE.
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As I didn’t click the run this job immediately checkbox, I decided to run the job manually.
I choose INCREMENTAL as I didn’t want multiple full backups.
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The job is now in progress.
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You can see, my backup job completed successfully!
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This is how you backup your Hyper-V VMs!
Coming soon, I’ll setup a job to backup these VMs to the cloud!
You can download VEMBU here!
- Want to get more information on Vembu & Hyper-V? Check out the product page here!
Vembu Backup & Replication for Hyper-V - Part 1 – Deploying Vembu BDR Suite (System Requirements)
https://www.thelowercasew.com/deploying-vembu-bdr-suite - Part 2 – Deploying Vembu BDR Suite (Installation)
https://www.thelowercasew.com/deploying-vembu-bdr-suite-part-2-installation - Upgrading Vembu BDR Suite to version 5.2.0
https://www.thelowercasew.com/new-vembu-bdr-suite-release-version-5-2-0 - Part 3 – Deploying Vembu BDR Suite (Configuration)
https://www.thelowercasew.com/deploying-vembu-bdr-suite-part-3-configuration - Part 4 – Deploying Vembu BDR Suite (Replication)
https://www.thelowercasew.com/deploying-vembu-bdr-suite-part-4-replication - New Vembu BDR Suite v5.3
https://www.thelowercasew.com/new-vembu-bdr-suite-v5-3 - Vembu BDR Suite v5.3 – Endpoint Backups
https://www.thelowercasew.com/vembu-bdr-suite-5-3-endpoint-backups - Vembu BDR Suite 5.3 – Microsoft 365 Backup
https://www.thelowercasew.com/vembu-bdr-suite-5-3-microsoft-365-backup - Vembu – How to Setup Immutable Backups to AWS S3
https://www.thelowercasew.com/vembu-how-to-setup-immutable-backups-to-aws-s3
Ben Liebowitz, VCP, vExpert
NJ VMUG Leader