Replay 4 – Backup & Disaster Recovery for MS Hyper-V

TECHNICAL OVERVIEW

Introduction

One of the challenges of managing a Hyper-V environment is creating and implementing a disaster recovery plan.
While creating virtual machine snapshots is a valuable facility for protecting your virtual machines during risky
procedures they are not a substitute for host-based backups. The biggest limitation of virtual machine snapshots
is that they do not offer the same level of protection as host based image backups, and they can really hurt virtual
machine performance.

There are two choices to protect a Hyper-V environment, host based backups or running backups within the guest
virtual machine. Depending on the type of workloads, each approach has its advantages and disadvantages.

Host Based Image Backups

The easiest approach to backing up a Hyper-V host is to run a
host based backup. One of the cool features of Hyper-V is its
integration with VSS. The Hyper-V VSS writer safely snapshots
each guest virtual machine from a single host based VSS backup.
To use this facility, there are several technical considerations that
you should understand.

1. Integration Services – You can perform a backup of running guest virtual machines if each virtual machine
   has the integration services installed and the Backup integration service enabled. This approach will not
   support non Windows guest virtual machines or Windows versions that are not compatible with the
   integration services.
2. The guest virtual machines use volumes formatted as NTFS or FAT and are configured to use basic disks.
   Dynamic disks are not supported within a VHD, Hyper-V virtual hard disk however they are supported by
   host volumes that store the guest virtual machines (VHD).
3. VSS must be enabled for all volumes that contain virtual machine components and each volume must be
   configured to store its own shadow copy data. Make sure each volume has the appropriate amount of
   free space to accommodate shadow copy data.
4. If the above are not met, the backup will place each guest virtual machine in a paused state during the
   snapshot, disconnecting users and pausing applications until the snapshot is complete. This can take
   many minutes to complete.

Guest Image Backups

Guest Image backups install an agent on each guest virtual
machine and perform that backup from within the guest. While
this approach requires additional installation and setup time, it is
recommended for particular types of application workloads such
as Exchange. To use this approach, there are several technical
considerations that you should understand.

1. The backups occur at the virtual machine level not the host level.
2. VSS is leveraged from within the virtual machine, no need to install the Hyper-V integration services.
3. Supports dynamic and basic disks.
4. The Backup does not impact the performance of the other virtual machines on the host.

Host Image Backups vs. Guest Image Backups

Replay for Hyper-V

Replay for Hyper-V is an enterprise-class backup & disaster recovery solution designed for Windows Server 2008
Hyper-V environments. It supports both host and guest backup methodologies while delivering backup &
recovery, advanced disaster recovery and replication capabilities in one solution.

Replay 4		Hyper-V
Backup & Recovery Features
	Host based agents supports an unlimited number of guest virtual machines
	Continuous application protection - online point-in-time imaging for Hyper-V hosts and guest virtual machines
	Application support for Exchange, SQL and SharePoint
	Compression and Dedupe of recovery points
	Flexible storage options, recovery points can be stored on a remote or removable disk drive, DAS NAS or SAN storage
	Centralized monitoring and management of backups
	Snapshot Granularity
	File level and application object level recoveries
Disaster Recovery Features
	Bare-metal server recoveries Restore to Dissimilar Hardware is an available option
	Rescue images enabling 1 click server restores
	P2V, V2V, Export to virtual machines for migrations and testing (VMware and Hyper-V Supported)
	Off-host processing eliminates backup windows – fast Backups (RPO)
	Live Replay – fast restores ( RTO )
	Centralized recovery points for efficient storage management
High Availability Features
	Virtual Standby – Automatic creation and continuous updates of virtual standby environments. Supports VMware and Hyper-V P2V,V2V,P2P
	Push button failover with High Availability features
Replication Features
	Off-site backups to Cloud Offering or Client DR Site
	Off-site recovery of virtual machines and servers to Cloud or DR Site
	Off-Site retention policies

Protecting and Restoring a Hyper-V Server

Follow the steps below to protect a Hyper-V host:

1. Protect the Hyper-V host machine by installing the Replay Agent on the host.
2. Take a base image of the hyper-v host from the Replay Admin Console.
3. Make a rescue image export for the hyper-v host and export it to a network drive.
4. Make an RRC CD for the domain (this will allow you to restore the system drive.)

Follow the steps below to restore a Hyper-V host:

1. Boot from the RRC boot CD.
2. Map network drive to the location of the rescue image and restore all the drives. The host will be restored back to the point in time when the rescue image was last exported.
3. Reboot when complete.

Note: The virtual network settings are restored when the Hyper-V host is restored.

Restoring Files

Individual files within virtual machines can be restored. Replay’s recovery points are mountable as drive letters or
mount points. Mount the recovery point containing the VHD, copy it to a local driver and mount the VHD with
Windows Disk Manager or our free VHD Mount Shell Extension.

Replay offers a free Explorer utility that mounts VHD’s as drive letters so you can access the files.

http://www.appassure.com/applications/free-tools/hyper-v-toolset/

Restoring a Volume

If a disk fails, Replay can restore a volume on the Hyper-V host. Be careful to restore all dependent volumes during the restore process.

Restore non-system drive:

Turn off all VMs that are on the drive. DO NOT SAVE. They must be turned off. The drive cannot be accessed
during a restore. Any VM that is not tuned off when the restore starts will have to be recovered.

For the system drive:

The system disk can be restored by Replay using 1 of 2 options. Option 1 is to create a rescue image by enabling
the feature in the console. The rescue image is a set of files that can be restore directly from our Replay Recovery
Console. Option 2, is available if you have deployed a Replay Core on another machine. If so, you can perform a
bare-metal recovery to existing or new hardware.

Follow the steps below to restore a server using a Rescue Image:

1. Boot into the Replay Recovery Console (RRC).
2. Launch the image restore console and point to the location of the rescue image. You can use NET USE to
   map a drive over the network.
3. Recover the volumes.
4. After the restore is complete remove the RRC disk and reboot.

Restoring a Virtual Machine

Follow the steps below to restore an individual virtual machine:

1. Mount the recover point from the Replay Admin Console.
2. Locate the VHDs of the VM that you want to recover with Explorer.
3. Copy the file to a share that is on the Hyper-V host.
4. Move the VHD off the share and to the new destination location.
5. Make a new VM in the Hyper-V manager point to the VHD’s that were copied from the recovery point.
6. Finish the settings for that VM. (Network Cards, Hard Drives, CPU, Memory Settings, etc.)
7. Start the new, recovered VM.

Installation and Configuration

Replay 4 Components

Replay Cores – Cores process backups, validates application integrity, compresses and deduplicates snapshots and
replicates them over the WAN to a remote disaster recovery site. Cores can be local to the server being protected
or distributed throughout the network enabling a flexible and scalable backup and disaster recovery
configuration.

Replay Agents – Agents are installed on each the protected server or on Hyper-V hosts. It’s responsible for
capturing block-level changes on the server and sending them a Relay Core. A core can manage 1 to many
agents. It also handles restores and server rollbacks.

Replay Admin Console – An enterprise console that centrally manages the Replay 4 environment.

VHD Naming Recommendation

Before the install it is recommended that you name all of your VHDs as the VM computer name – drive letter as
they are mapped in the VM. For example, for the VM guest that has 3 VHD’s, the name recommendation is
guestbox-C.vhd guestbox-d.vhd.

For single server configurations, the Replay Core should be installed on the Hyper-V host.

1. Install the Replay Agent and Replay Core on the host; turn off all running VMs, then reboot.
2. Launch the Replay Admin Console from the Host.
3. Click Protect to open the Protect Server wizard.
4. Enter the name of the Hyper-V host, by name or IP address.
5. Select a location of the repository. It can be a share or local disk. If you are using a local disk, it should NOT be protected by Replay.
6. Click Next. Make sure and select the option, “Advanced, protect the volume individually”
7. Click Finish.
8. From the summary tab of the Hyper-V host, select the volumes to protect, excluding the volume that contains the Replay repository.
9. A base image will begin automatically.

For distributed configurations, the Replay Core should be installed on a separate machine outside of the Hyper-V host.

1. Install the Replay Agent on the host; turn off all running VMs, then reboot.
2. Install the Replay Core on a virtual machine running outside of the protected Hyper-V host or on another physical server.
3. From the Replay Admin Console, add the Hyper-V host as a protected server.