Configure Hyper-V Backups

Configure Hyper-V Backups

In this section, we will guide you through configuring Hyper-V backups using BDRSuite. You'll learn how to set up agentless backups for your Hyper-V virtual machines, ensuring seamless data protection and recovery.

Step 1: Adding Basic Job Details

Get started by creating a backup job by choosing Job Create Option, choose to Create Job without using a template if you want to create a backup from scratch, or choose to Create Job using an existing template if you would like to use an already created template for the backup job creation.

Backup Job Name

In the Backup Job Name filed, Provide a name for the backup job to identify it. The allowed characters in the backup job name are [A-Z][a-z][0-9][ – _ ]. Space and Special characters are not allowed.

Backup Repository

Choose Block storage or the Object storage as per requirement.

Immutable Backups (Only for Object Storage)

You have the option to enable this feature by checking the box, which will secure your backups as immutable for a specific duration. The duration can be specified and you do it for up to 999 day(s). The duration set will be applied to this backup job, which you’ll configure in subsequent steps. When configuring other backup jobs, ensure to adjust the duration according to your needs.
Immutable backup in the BDRSuite Backup Server is a backup strategy or system you can use where once the data is backed up, it cannot be edited, deleted, or tampered with until a predefined time period expires that can be set up as shown below in the image representation. This approach adds an extra layer of protection to the backup data, making it resistant to ransomware attacks, accidental or malicious changes.

Repository Name

After selecting the Backup Repository type, you have to select the name of the Block Storage or Object Storage repository to store the backup data. Click on the drop-down to select the backup repository name.

Job Description

In the Job Description field, provide a description for future reference. You can provide additional information related to this backup job in the description field.

Step 2: Select Host/VMs to Backup

The Hyper-V hosts added to the Data Sources of BDRSuite Backup Server will be listed. If you have added a Hyper-V Cluster, then all the nodes under that Hyper-V Cluster and VMs under each node will be listed.
  1. Select the virtual machines for the backup from the list of VMs available in the added Hyper-V host by selecting the checkboxes corresponding to it.
  2. You can either select the individual VMs or the entire Hyper-V host for the backup. You can also select the VMs from different Hyper-V nodes in a single backup job.
  3. Search for the VMs or Hosts added to the Data Sources by using the search bar and add it to the backup job
Notes
Note: If the entire host is selected for backup, the new VMs added to that host will be automatically backed up in the next schedule. Each backup job can have multiple VMs in it. During the backup schedule, VM data will be processed based on the configuration you set on the Backups > Configure Backup Settings > Concurrent Backups.

Step 3. Specify VM/Disk Exclusion

VM Exclusion

If one or more  Hyper-V is selected for the backup, then you can see the selected hosts are being displayed under the VM Exclusion page.
  1. Click on the list icon corresponding to the Hyper-V host and select the VMs you want to exclude from the backup.
  2. Excluding VMs is applicable only if the entire Hosts are selected for backup. It is not applicable if only VMs under Hosts are selected for backup.

Disk Exclusion

You can exclude a particular disk type being backed up either at the host level or VM level using the Disk Exclusion. Under the Disk Exclusion tab, you can find all the Hyper-V hosts & VMs selected for the backup.
  1. You can configure the global exclusion rules for the entire host or selected VMs by clicking on the edit icon. If you are configuring the disk exclusion for the entire Hyper-V host, it will be applicable to all the VMs running inside that particular host.
  2. You can also specify the disk exclusion setting for the individual VMs in the host by clicking on the list icon and selecting the VMs to which you want to apply the disk exclusion setting individually and click on Add VMs for Disk Exclusion.
  3. Clicking on the edit icon corresponding to the Host or VM will display the following options.
  4. Include All Disks for backup. No Disks should be excluded: No disks will be excluded from the backup. By default, this option is selected.
Include only System Disks for backup. Exclude others (Typically Disk 0:0): This option will include only the OS Disks for backup and exclude others. Only the disk with the number 0:0 will be included regardless of the Disk type.
Exclude the following selected Disks from backup: This option will allow you to select the type of disk that has to be excluded from the backup schedule such as IDE, SATA, and SCSI.
Click on Apply after configuring the disk exclusion.

Step 4: Setup Guest Processing

Guest processing settings allow you to configure Application-aware processing, Log truncation, and File exclusion for the VMs selected for backup.
  1. Guest Processing Settings
  2. Guest Credentials

Guest Processing Settings

Click on the ‘Enable Guest Processing Settings for All Hosts/VMs below’ checkbox to start customizing the guest processing configuration of the VMs selected for the backup.
  1. Windows Application
  2. File Exclusion
If you are selecting the entire Hyper V server for a backup, and if you want to customize the guest processing setting for the individual guest VMs, Click on the List icon in the action column corresponding to the Hyper V server and select the VM & click Add VMs for Guest Processing button.
Selected VMs will be listed on the Guest Processing settings page, from where you can customize the guest processing setting for the individual guest VMs.
Notes
Note: Guest Processing Settings is an optional step, you can also continue without setting up the guest processing. If the guest OS processing is not enabled, the snapshot is taken irrespective of whether the VSS Writers are stable or not. There is a higher chance of data corruption in this case which can lead to corrupted data restoration during disaster recovery.
To customize the guest processing settings of the VMs or the Host, you have to select the checkbox corresponding to the Host/VM Name and click the Edit Guest Processing Settings button on the right side of your screen.
By default,
  1. Application-Aware Processing is set to Require successful application processing (recommended).
  2. Log Truncation is set to Truncate the transaction logs.
  3. Archived logs processing is set to Delete archive logs older than 1 hour.
  4. File exclusion is set to Exclude system files like pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys from backup.

Windows Applications

Choosing the Host/VM listed and clicking on Edit Guest Processing Settings will bring you to this page. If you are backing up a Windows VM with Microsoft applications such as Exchange, SQL, SharePoint, or AD, under the Windows Application tab, you can see the options to customize the Application-Aware Processing & Log Truncation.

Application-Aware Processing

  1. On selecting Require successful application processing (recommended), the backup will continue only if all the application writers are stable and the application-aware processing is successful.
  2. On selecting Ignore application processing failures, the backup will proceed regardless of whether application-aware is successful or not. This is not recommended, as your backup may not be transaction-consistent.
  3. On selecting Disable application-aware processing, the backup will proceed without ensuring the transaction consistency for the applications inside the VMs.

Log Truncation

  1. On selecting Truncate the transaction logs, the transaction logs of Microsoft Exchange Server & Microsoft SQL Server will be truncated after the successful backups.
  2. On selecting Do not truncate logs, the transaction logs of Microsoft Exchange Server & Microsoft SQL Server will not be truncated.

File Exclusion

If you do not want to backup system files like pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys from your windows VM. You can exclude it by selecting the Exclude system files like pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys from backup checkbox in the File Exclusion tab. Note that this option is supported only for Windows NTFS volumes.
Click on Apply after selecting the required Application-Aware processing, Log Truncation, Oracle Archive log processing & File Exclusion settings. Click on Next after applying the required setting.

Guest Credentials

You can specify the credentials of the VM to perform the Guest OS Processing.
  1. To apply the credentials, select the VMs or Host from the list and click the Apply Credential button on the right side of your screen.
  2. Select the credentials from the list or you can add the new credentials by clicking the Add Credentials button. The selected credentials are applied to the selected VMs. BDRSuite will try to log in to the VMs using the selected credential and perform guest processing.
  3. If you are selecting the entire ESXi host or vCenter server for a backup, and if the login credential of the guest OS differs, then you can click on the List icon in the action column corresponding to the Hyper V server and select the VM & click Add VMs for Guest Processing button.
  4. Once the selected VMs are listed on the Guest Credentials page, you can customize the login credentials.

Step 5: Backup Job Scheduling

After the initial full backup, BDRSuite backs up the changed blocks of the selected hosts or VMs or additional full backup on a regular basis. In this step, you have to specify the schedule for the Incremental Backup, Synthetic Full Backup, Additional Full Backup, and configure other schedule settings.
  1. Incremental Backup Schedule
  2. Synthetic Full Backup Schedule
  3. Additional Full Backup Schedule
  4. Advanced Schedule Settings

Incremental Backup Schedule

During the incremental backup schedule, BDRSuite backs up only the changed block of the VMs since the recent full backup. You can schedule the incremental backup on any one of the following intervals.
  1. Manually: The incremental backup will not run automatically, you have to go to Backup > List Backup Jobs page and run the incremental backups manually.
  2. One Time: The backup will run only once at the selected time. No incremental backups will be processed after that.
  3. Every Few Hours/Min: You can specify a frequency and days to run the incremental backups. The minimum frequency to run the incremental backups in the Every Few Hours/Min option is 15 minutes. By default, all the days of the week are selected. If you don’t want to run your backup on all days, select only the days in which you want to run the incremental backup.
  4. Daily: In the daily option, you can specify the days and number of times the incremental backups should run on a particular day. You can run the incremental backups to run up to 5 times a day and you have to specify the time timing for every incremental backup.
  5. Weekly: In the weekly option, you have to specify the day, and when you want to run the incremental backups on the specified day. In the weekly incremental schedule, you can run only one incremental backup per day.
  6. Monthly: In the monthly option, you have to specify the months, and a day in the month, and a time in the selected day to run the incremental backup.
  7. After Backup: You have to specify the name of the already created backup job. So the backup job will run immediately after the selected backup job schedule is completed successfully.

Synthetic Full Backup

Running an additional full backup periodically is resource-intensive and requires more network bandwidth. In these situations, you can use the synthetic full backup option of BDRSuite as an alternative.
Instead of creating a new full backup periodically by creating a snapshot of the source VM, BDRSuite creates synthetic full backup by merging full and subsequent incremental in the repository without running an additional full backup. The synthetic full backup is an optional configuration, you can save the backup job without enabling the Synthetic merge.
Enable the synthetic full backup by toggling the slider to the right. Once enabled you will have to specify the scheduling for the synthetic merge to happen.
Specify the synthetic full backup frequency. You can specify the synthetic merge to happen on a weekly or monthly basis.
  1. If you have scheduled the incremental backups to run Every Few Hours/Min or Daily or After Backup, then you can set the synthetic merge frequency as weekly or monthly.
  2. If you have scheduled the incremental backups to run Weekly or Monthly, then you can set the synthetic merge frequency to happen only on a monthly basis.
  3. Synthetic merge is disabled for Manually & One Time backup schedules.
If you are selecting the synthetic full merge to happen on a weekly basis, then you have to select a day and start time to run the synthetic merge. You can select one or more days in a week to run the synthetic merge.
If you are selecting the synthetic full merge to happen on a monthly basis, then you have to select the month, select a day in the month and start time to run the synthetic merge. You can select one or more months in a year to run the synthetic merge.

Additional Full Backup Schedule

In some cases, you may require to create a periodic full backup weekly or monthly, or quarterly basis to adhere to your organization policy. Also, it is not a best practice to configure a backup job with one full backup followed by forever incremental backups. BDRSuite’s Additional full backup option allows you to comply with your requirements by creating a full backup periodically.
The additional full backup resets a backup chain and the subsequent incremental are based on the recent full backup. Running additional full backups frequently may sometimes lead to storage space consumption, you can automatically delete the older full backups chain by setting the appropriate retention policy for the additional full backups or deleting it manually when required.
Enable the additional full backup by toggling the slider to the right. Once enabled you will have to specify the scheduling for the synthetic merge to happen.
Specify the Additional full backup frequency. You can specify to run the additional full backups on a weekly or monthly basis.
  1. If you have scheduled the incremental backups to run Every Few Hours/Min or Daily or After Backup, then you can set the additional full backups frequency as Daily or Weekly or Monthly.
  2. If you have scheduled the incremental backups to run Weekly or Monthly, then you can set the additional full backups to run on a Weekly or Monthly basis.
  3. Additional full backups are disabled Manually & One Time backup schedules
  4. If you are selecting the additional full backups to run on a daily basis, then you have to select the start time to run the additional full backups.
  5. If you are selecting the additional full backups to run on a weekly basis, then you have to select a day and start time to run the synthetic merge. You can select one or more days in a week to run the additional full backups.
  6. If you are selecting the additional full backups to happen on a monthly basis, then you have to select the month, select a day in the month and start time to run the additional full backups. You can select one or more months in a year to run the additional full backups.

Advanced Schedule Settings

The Advanced Schedule Settings allow you to specify the Backup Window time and Backup Validity for your backup job.
Backup Window
If you don’t want the backup run at a specific time interval, then you can specify it in the backup time window. The backup window prevents the backup job from running during peak production hours and ensures there is no unwanted overhead in the production environment. Select one of the available options to set up the backup window for your backup job
Use Global Settings: Selecting the‘ Use Global Settings’ option will apply the Backup Window setting of your backup server to this backup job. You can set up the global backup window settings for your entire backup server at Backup > Configure Backup Settings > Backup Window.
  1. In case, if you are selecting the ‘Use Global Settings’, but if global backup window settings are disabled for your backup server, then the job will run as per its schedule
  2. If you are modifying the Global Backup Windows settings later, it will affect all the backup jobs that are selected with ‘Use Global Settings’
Use Custom Settings: On selecting ‘Use Custom settings’, you have to specify the start time and end time for the window. The backup job will not during the selected time interval. You can also specify the applicable days for the backup window settings such as Mon-Fri or All days. Selecting the ‘Use Custom settings’ will override the global backup window settings.
No Preferences: Selecting ‘No Preferences’ will override the global backup window settings and the backup job will run as per the schedule.
Backup Validity
Set the validity for your backup job by specifying the start date and the expiration date. The Backup job will start to run only after the start date.
If you want a backup job to start to run later, for example, 5 days later from the day you have created the backup job, then you can specify the start date of the backup job accordingly. The expiry date is optional for a backup job, if the expiry date is set the incremental backup or additional full backup does not proceed after that.

Step 6: Backup Job Settings

The backup job settings section allows you to specify the retention policy, encryption setting, and other advanced settings for your backup job.
  1. Retention
  2. Encryption

Retention

The retention policy allows you to specify the number of days or number of versions, an incremental recovery point should be retained for the backup job. By setting up the retention policy, the redundant data blocks of the older recovery points are deleted from the backup repository, thereby saving the storage space. If the retention for incremental backup is disabled, all restore points will be retained.
Enable the retention for your incremental backup by toggling the slider to the right. Once enabled you have to select the retention method to retain the restore points. You can choose from the following Retention options.
  1. Retention for Incremental Backup
  2. Retention for Deleted (or) Removed VMs

Encryption

You can encrypt all the backup data for added protection. When encryption is enabled all the backup data blocks are encrypted using the AES-256 bit encryption algorithm both during the transfer and at the storage. For encrypting the backup data, you can use the system-generated encryption key or use a custom encryption key.
  1. By default, encryption is disabled for all the backup jobs, you can slide the toggle to the right to enable encryption for your backup data.
  2. Select ‘Use System Generated Encryption Key’ if you want to encrypt all your backup data using BDRSuite’s automatic System Generated Encryption Key. You do not need to specify any during the recovery or edit the backup job later.
  3. Select ‘ Use a Custom Encryption Key’ if you want to encrypt all your backup data using your own Encryption Key. You can select the already created encryption keys that are created for other backup jobs from the drop-down list or you can
  4. Add a new encryption key by providing the encryption password, encryption key hint.
  5. After providing the password and hint for the encryption key, click on the Save button.
Notes
Note: Even if the encryption is disabled, BDRSuite uses the system-generated password to encrypt backup data on storage. If you provide a custom password for encryption, data integrity checks will not be performed. It is recommended to perform Instant Boot VM periodically to ensure data integrity. Password and its hint should not be the same to avoid security issues. The Password should contain at least a character, a number, and a special character [! @ # $ % ^ & *] .Encryption hint should be at least 6 characters and not more than 25 characters. Encryption hints are unique and no two passwords can have the same encryption hint.

Step 7: Review & Save Backup Configuration

The last step in your Hyper-V backup job is to review all the configurations you have selected. You can find all the details about your backup job in the review section.
You have the option of running the backup job immediately after saving the backup. If you want your backup job to be triggered immediately after you save the backup, irrespective of the backup schedule you have configured, select the Run this job immediately after the saving option.
Carefully review all the configurations selected for the backup and save the backup job by clicking on the Save button. On saving the backup job, you will be prompted to confirm to proceed further. Click Save to complete the backup progress.
Info
Before creating a backup job for your Hyper-V VMs, Kindly make sure;
  1. The Hyper-V hosts on which the VMs are running are added to the production infrastructure of the BDRSuite Backup Server.
  2. The backup repositories are configured properly.
  3. The backup repository has enough free space to store the backup data.
  4. You have configured the email notification to receive alerts on the backup on the job such as successful, missed, or failed backups.
  5. To backup Microsoft SQL transaction logs, the recovery model must be set to Full or Bulk-logged recovery for required databases on Microsoft SQL Server VMs. If the recovery model is set to Simple, the transaction logs on Microsoft SQL Server VMs will not be detected and processed.
  6. To backup Oracle transaction logs, the ARCHIVELOG must be turned on for required databases on Oracle VMs. If the ARCHIVELOG is turned off, the transaction logs on Oracle VMs will not be detected and processed.
  7. To create a new backup job, on your backup server click Backup > Configure Backup > Microsoft Hyper-V and follow the on-screen instructions.

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