Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Scheduling Backup on Microsoft Hyper-V Server

To do a backup of the virtual machines installed on your Hyper-V Server (2008 or 2008 R2 editions) you need to complete the following steps.

  1. Install the backup feature by typing start /w ocsetup WindowsServerBackup from the command prompt.
  2. Get a list of the drives on which Hyper-V Server has stored virtual machines. This will be C: unless you have made changes.
  3. Determine the times you want to run the backup at.
  4. Determine the drive letter of the removable disk by typing at the command prompt each of the following commands
    1. diskpart
    2. list volume
    3. The disk drive letter will be displayed for the disk that matches the size of your removable disk.
    4. Type exit to exit diskpart.
  5. From the command prompt type wbadmin enable backup -addtarget:x: -schedule:hh:mm,h2:m2 -include:y:,z: -systemState -allCritical to backup to drive X: the contents of drives Y: and Z:, the system state and all drives critical to the running of the server.
  6. Confirm you want to schedule the backup at times HH:MM and H2:M2 (for twice a day). If you want one backup a day use HH:MM and if you want more than two just comma separate a group of times. Enter times as per local timezone. Check the current time on the Hyper-V Server by typing time from the command prompt.
  7. Start a backup now if you want by typing wbadmin start backup and confirming to use the same settings as the scheduled backup.
  8. Backup will proceed in the console. If you log out backup will remain running.
  9. Enter wbadmin enable backup to see the settings you have enabled.
  10. Type wbadmin get versions to see what backups have completed.

3 comments:

Paul said...

we used to do that but then found this tool here: http://backupchain.com/How-to-Back-up-Virtual-Machines-with-VMware-Virtual-Server-or-Hyper-V.html
i guess the main thing is to have a backup. however, if you need one every day and want to hold on to a couple day's worth of image versions, you quickly end up with a couple of TB unnecessarily. This tool will only store the change so it's a big saver for me
Paul

Dinko Fabricni said...

Scheduling the backup this way is okay if you just want to have backup. I also use it often but if you want single machine backup and restore you could try this tool: http://www.hyperveasybackup.com.

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