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We are going to be P2V 3 of our servers. During this process, we would like to rethink / rebuild how we backup our data. I want to try and move away from the traditional tape backup. However, there are procedures in place that require we hold the month end tapes for 5 years. So with that said, what options are available to us? We will be going with the following:

Hyper V 2008 R2 server (DL380 1-quad-core Xeon G7 24GB with 4x300SAS drives). We we would like to be able to back up all three vm's (sql svr, dc svr and file svr) and be able to restore them in case of disaster, as well as at the file level. The backups need to be continuous through-out the day and easy file recovery. We would then have some sort of backup to get them to tape for archiving. I have read about many products, but trying to get an idea on what people are using/ and thoughts.

thanks for the time.

CZhale
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I personally like Commvault but I've not problem with NetBackup either - both are fast, feature rich and can backup fully quieced VMs. There are other systems available but I can vouch for those two.

Chopper3
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NetBackup can back up (many types of) VMs either as if they were clients, or as "VM" images right off of the Hyper-V hosts. This is a moment-in-time type backup, and usually isn't done "continuously". It can run backups to disk storage or to tape.

For "continuous" backup, you can do some tricks depending on what your data store is. I see you are using direct attached storage. We are using NetApps in the back-end, and they have some features that make taking snapshots of VMs (almost) free, so you can do it on any schedule you like and only keep particular ones longer than "immediately". This is a very expensive way to get around, but solves the particular problem you have.

David Mackintosh
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