Back in May, Femi Adegoke reviewed an early beta version of Altaro Hyper-V Backup which was geared to easily backup & recover Hyper-V guests using the Hyper-V VSS Writer. Now Femi submitted his second guest blog focusing on how to protect guests in a clustered Hyper-V environment.

By Femi Adegoke

This is a follow up to our previous blog post from May 2011:
http://www.hyper-v.nu/archives/hvredevoort/2011/05/altaro-hyper-v-backup-review/

One interesting feature in this Altaro Hyper-V Backup release is support for CSV:
http://www.altaro.com/hyper-v-backup/

The current revision of the software is 2.0.8.0 BETA, download size is approximately 12.1 MB.

Our test was performed on a Dell 4 node Hyper-V cluster running 2008 R2 SP1 with a few virtual machines.

 

Installation

Installing the software was fast & easy and involved only a few mouse clicks. Can you believe that?

  • This software installs in less than 3 minutes per node.
  • No agent is required inside each guest

 

Dashboard

Dashboard view (this so schweeet…)

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Right away, we have a view of all guests in the cluster.

We are currently logged into Node 2 (see image below)

Under “Virtual Machines”, you can see the vm’s on Node 2.

In “Virtual Machines running….”, even though we can see virtual machines from Nodes 1, 3 & 4, you have to initiate the backup operation from the Node that is “hosting” the vm.

For verification, we have also provided a partial screenshot (underlay) of Microsoft Failover Cluster Manager MMC.

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The top pane provides info about your choice of two backup drives & backup schedule.

Configuration

Before we can start taking backup’s let’s setup a backup drive and then select a vm.

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Click “Save and go to Step 2…”

Altaro will take a few minutes and scan for connected drives.

I chose the “Back up to network path (UNC path)…” option

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I successfully tested my Credentials

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To setup Notifications, click on “Go to Step 3 of Setup…”

Backup

With all the prep work done, we can take our first backup.

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First backup is in progress

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Good news. Green check mark means backup is successful.

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Recovery

It’s restore time.

I’ve installed Altaro Hyper-V Backup on a standalone, non-clustered, Hyper-V host.

File Level Restore & Fire Drill are disabled in this version of the beta.

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I will use the third restore option.

This is a 3 step wizard.

Step 1: Choose backup folder, enter UNC Network path, test credentials & add Network location.

Step 2: Select which Guest VM you wish to restore…

Step 3: Restore the selected Guest VMs…

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Restore in progress

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Green checkmark is a good sign

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The restored vm is now up & running (on a non-clustered Hyper-V host)

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Conclusion

I continue to be amazed by the ease of use even though it’s still in Beta.

Props to Altaro for figuring out CSV support.

There are very few backup software vendors (I can count them on one hand) that can backup CSV without installing an agent in each Virtual Machine

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Thanks again Femi for writing this updated review. The product has become a lot more useful since the majority of Hyper-V implementations we deal with are clustered and use Cluster Shared Volumes. If you are looking for an extremely easy way of protecting your Hyper-V guests (host-based) it is worth your while to give this a try.

Good luck!
Hans