Backing up Microsoft Virtual Server with CA

[jcon26]

Arcserve seems to not have the capability to backup either VUD(Virtual Undo Disk) or VHD(Virtual Hard Drive) files that are associated with virtual servers. Has anyone noticed this? Do you know if there is a workaround?

Thanks in advance,
Jcon

 

[vschumpy]

Are you using r11.5? Support for VS 2005 was only added with r11.5.

 

[jcon26]

I am using r11.5. Is there a patch that needs to be applied in 11.5 or was this functionality built in native to the release?

-jcon

 

[vschumpy]

As far as I am aware the functionality as such means that a host server install will run inside virtual server, rather than acting like an agent to backup virtual server components outside it.

Can you elaborate on how exactly your attempting to backup and from where?

 

[jcon26]

Well I can install the agent on the virtual servers and that works fine, so I am getting the actual server data. My problem lies on the host server. As you know, the host server has folders setup for each virtual machine that it hosts. There are files, .vhd, which is the virtual hard drive of the virtual machine, and .vud, the virtual undo disk which is basically a save of the drive so that if you make a change you can revert back. The CA agent on the host server will not back up those files, even though I use the Open Files agent. The open file agent log merely states that the files could not be backed up.

I can exclude the vhd and vud files from the backup and still have the information backed up from the virtual server but it would be easier for me in the event of a disaster to recover those files instead of the actual virtual server. The only reason we backup the virtual servers is for file restores.

Does this make a little more sense?

 

[vschumpy]

What you are looking for is an application backup agent, rather than what ARCserve is offering - a 'Runs on Virtual Server'.

Using an agent on it as you are should work fine.

If you want to back the active disk files up from the host system then you could use the open file agent, but there's no real guarantee that a restored file would be in a consistant enough state to be able to boot from.