Hi all. I have a 2008 R2 Ent. server, acting as Hyper-V host. There are 4 VMs, all 2008 R2. The VMs are a mix of domain controllers, and an Exchange 2010 server.
We've been using BE 2010 R3 for some time on it, the backups always required only 1 tape. We're doing only full backups each day. Over the weekend I went to upgrade to BE 2012. That went terribly, it screwed everything up. Logon Accounts couldn't authenticate, backup jobs (though I only had two of them, an extremely simple setup) got severed, one was gone completely even though it wasn't mentioned in the migration report. I couldn't establish trust relationships with my RAWS agents on the VMs despite everything working fine prior to migration. Restarting BE services had on effect. Just a mess. I completely uninstalled BE2012, and installed it again creating a new database and everything. This serves as a good reminder why a clean insall is always preferrable to an upgrade.
Anyway on to my question(s), posed more in story format (sorry guys)
So with a clean slate to work from I first wanted to see if BE detected my servers (1 host + 4 VMs). It did - some only displayed the server name at first and some had their FQDN showing. The BE install required a 65MB hotfix, so I installed that, plus updated the 4 RAWS agents on the 4 VMs. I assume the local agent on the Hyper-V host/BE media server gets updated automatically. All went successfully.
I went to create my first backup job. I clicked the "backup to tape" one. On the left pane of the resulting screen where you do your Selections, it shows 3 of the servers as selected and two of them as "not Selected" with no way to change that. I cancelled out. I couldn't get this to smarten up so I stopped/started the BE servcies. Went back to create the job, and now things look right. On the left it says Fully Selected. Oddly it doesn't list the 5 servers anymore, it just showed the contents of the host server (C:, F:, System State, a few other items, and Hyper-V - all checked). It did this by default so I didn't actually click anything to select. On the right part of this screen, I modified the Full backup section, and removed the Incremental section. I just want full backups each day.
I assume since I have the option/agent for Apps & Databases, and the one for Hyper-V installed, BE knows to do full backups of any VM found within Hyper-V since Hyper-V was fully checkmarked in the Selections part of the backup job creation screen. And I assume it knows to implement or enable any GRT functionality.
I also have the Deduplication Option installed - do I need to enable it though or is it put to use just y being installed?
As I mentioned, the backup job always took just 1 tape. Now it asks for another tape at 71%, so there's another 500GB of data still to back up. Not only is it not using dedupe for sure, it's not even compressing the data either it seems. In BE 2010 I'd get a 2.9:1 ratio on average and BE 2010 didn't evcen have dedupe installed either.
When I go to Backup & Restore tab, then to the Servers list, it shows the host as Backing up (it's in progress right now). The 4 VM servers listed below it say "never Backed up". I hope this changes once the backup completes.
When I go to the Jobs screen, I see just the one backup job I created. I assume this will cover these VM's as well since Hyper-V had been selected in the selection sscreen during creation. Or do I havec to create a backup job for each virtual machine as well?
When I did the BE 2012 training many many months ago now, I recall one thing: if your backup job is Fully Selected for a Hyper-V host server and you have the App & DB and Hyper-V agents installed, it will back up the entire server, all VM's, and all files/Exchange objects etc., so that you can restore invidiual files, emails, or entire VMs as needed.
Can anyone help? Thank you.