leedesmond’s blog

If you deploy SCVMM to manage your virtual infrastructure, navigating to DPM / Protection Group and expanding the <clusterName> on the “Select Group Members” page will present you with the opportunity to pick from a list of virtual machines prefixed with <SCVMM> for backup.

Assuming that you have a clustered VM resource named Exchange, it will read “SCVMM Exchange Resources” below “<clusterName> (Cluster)”. Drill down to “HyperV” and put a check against “Backup Using Child Partition Snapshot\Exchange”. Complete the remaining steps to finalize your backup requirements (backup media, goals, schedule, etc.).

For the reverse procedure (data restore), click on the Recovery tab and move to the Browse tab. On the left hand pane, expand “Recoverable data” and choose the node representing the Active Directory domain name. Instead of the <clusterName> name, you will find “SCVMM Exchange Resources (<clusterNameFQDN>)” along with other protected servers and resources (SQL, SharePoint, etc.).

In order to recover the entire VM - virtual hard disks (vhd), Virtual Machines folders, XML/bin/vsv files, etc. - it is imperative to first select “All Protected HyperV Data” in the tree view (Protected Data) on the left hand side. Be aware that these files do not show up as individual items for selection.

On the list pane to the right, highlight “Backup Using Child Partition Snapshot\Exchange” and locate the desired recovery point, date, time and backup media using the calendar. Click on Recover where you have a choice on the “Recovery Type” page to perform restore using one of the options:

Recover to original instance
Recover as virtual machine to any host
Copy to a network folder
Copy to tape

For restoration of just the associated vhd files of the VM, double click “Backup Using Child Partition Snapshot\Exchange”. You can only pick a single vhd for recovery one at a time. The recovery target in this case is limited to “Copy to a network folder”. Should you attempt to replace the vhds using this approach, VMM may fail to start the VM and complain with the error:

Error (12711)
VMM cannot complete the WMI operation on server <clusterNodeNameFQDN> because of error: [MSCluster_Resource.Name=”SCVMM Exchange”] The group or resource is not in the correct state to perform the requested operation.

(The group or resource is not in the correct state to perform the requested operation (0×139F))

To learn more about a cluster and its nodes under DPM, simply hover and pause the mouse over the entity to see the corresponding tool tip:

<clusterName> consists of multiple servers, which may have unclustered resources. Unclustered resources are listed separately under server names. Since this list is sorted alphabetically, server names may appear somewhere else in this tree view.

<clusterNodeName> is part of a cluster. Unclustered resources on this server are listed here. Clustered resources belonging to the same cluster are listed under cluster name separately. Since this list is sorted alphabetically, cluster name may appear somewhere else in this tree view.

Environment
Hyper-V R2 in a 2-node Fail-over Cluster with Cluster Shared Volume, CSV*
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2, v2.0.4273.0
Data Protection Manager 2010 RTM*

*  Windows Server 2008 R2

See also:
Restore of hyper-v VM’s on DPM 2010 in Data Protection Manager

Technorati tags: System Center, Data Protection Manager, Virtual Machine Manager, Windows Server 2008 R2

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Currently taking place in beautiful Interlaken, Switzerland, X.DAYS is a 2-day event (17-18 March 2010) that brings together the “Who is Who” in the Swiss ICT industry. Delegates include 3C level executives - CEOs, CIOs, CFOs - and decision and policy makers from KMU, small, medium to large international organizations.

More information and registration can be found at the official web-site.

Interested in the Microsoft System Center family of products? Check out the cool videos here and here (first in 3D TV/three dimension television live _without_ 3D glasses at the event).

Technorati tags: Events

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Expected to open for public beta later this month, VMware administrators will be glad to know that they can look forward to manage their VI environment using PowerShell-enabled VirtualCenter.

You have an alternative in V2 of Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) which will be enhanced to support administration of VMware ESX Server and VI3 (and Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V).

You can read more at source.

Technorati tags: VMware, SCVMM

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Announced a couple of days ago, sort of a 4-in-1 blog announcement covering System Center Virtual Machine Manager / SCVMM / Carmine (codename):

1. it is now officially released with GA expected in Oct 2007 (trial download)
2. licensing and pricing information is released (licensed per physical host and unlimited VMs)
3. a new Workgroup edition for max 5 physical hosts and unlimited VMs (expected Jan 2008)
4. support for Virtual Server, Viridian and non-Windows virtualization environments (VMWare and Xen)

Read more at the source.

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This is an update on the above unified VHD demo toolkit. Supported operating systems include Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista. Additional requirements: Virtual PC 2007 or Virtual Server 2005 R2. Download and more information here.

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Earlier this week, the Windows Server Division Weblog announced the availability of SP1 for Virtual Server 2005 Enterprise Edition. The Virtual PC Guy also blogged about it here. Some notable features of the service pack:

- hardware assisted virtualization
- volume shadow copy (VSS) for online backup and restore
- storage agnostic host clustering on a per VM basis
- vhdmount.exe (off-line VHD mounting)
- guest OS support for Novell SLES 10 and Solaris 10

Pay attention to the pre-requisites to install Virtual Server 2005 SP1. More information and link to download here.

While on the subject of VM, centralized administration and management should be of interest to any IT Pro in an enterprise. Check out System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 now available as Beta 2 either as a download for installation on a physical machine or take advantage of the pre-configured VHD here.

Finally, take a look at Microsoft’s licensing strategy captured in this article regarding the deployment of Windows operating system on virtual machines hosted on virtualization platforms other than Microsoft’s.

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Pre-built virtual machine images that come in the RAR format to allow for jump-start evaluation of SCVMM Beta 2. It comes in 2 x RAR files and a self extract EXE coming just under 2GB in size. Requires Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 with the Administration Website installed. More information and download here.

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System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) Beta 2 and Longhorn Server Beta 3 are the latest beta programs available for download at connect.microsoft.com. For the latter, more information and public beta download are available at www.microsoft.com/windowsserver/longhorn/default.mspx.

Both are part of a growing list of core, strategic Microsoft products that integrate my favorite administrative tool of choice for IT Professionals - PowerShell (first is Exchange Server 2007). Watch this space for more!

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