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JoelC707
Premium Member
join:2002-07-09
Lanett, AL

JoelC707

Premium Member

Setting up DPM Protection Group of Hyper-V cluster

So, I've got my Hyper-V cluster built (or should I say re-built as I am now running on a C6100 for the cluster nodes and a c2100 for SAN). I'm also now using SMB file shares instead of iSCSI if that matters.

I found this in a Google search: »technet.microsoft.com/en ··· 866.aspx and I've installed the VSS component on the c2100. All nodes as well as the cluster group and the SAN have the DPM agent installed. DPM version being used is 2012, I tried 2012 R2 but apparently there's an issue with the installer not creating a user/group correctly or something. I tried the workaround I found on Technet but no dice, they're working on it. Hyper-V is now 2012 R2 and the c2100 SAN is 2012 R2 Standard.

If I go to make a new protection group, I expand the cluster entry and am greeted with all of the VMs running on the cluster. Open them up and I see "HyperV > Online\$name$" (or sometimes Offline\$name$). I select that or select "HyperV" and click next. When I get to the data size needed in the storage pool, the data size is 0 KB. I tried other VMs and tried multiple VMs selected at once and it's always 0 KB. It does list a size needed in storage pool but it's only a couple of gigs per VM.

So I back up to the selection list, clear everything and scroll down to one of the nodes and expand that. In that list I have the usual shares, volumes and such that you see on standard servers but I also see "hyperV" (just like you'll see SQL/Exchange components on those servers). Great, expand that but all I see is "host component" and nothing more. Just for shits and giggles, I select that and proceed. Total data size is 50 KB, nope still not right.

Now then, I did not reboot any of the servers. I selected manual reboot so I could make sure to drain the roles properly if it needed to reboot. In the agent management, it does not say any of the protected computers need a reboot so I have not rebooted them.

Looking at the "requirements" list:
- Auto-mount should be on by default (I have not explicitly disabled it so I assume it is still on).
- TCP Chimney offload is apparently more of a "best practice" as it apparently caused issues during the beta test (have not disabled this yet).
- Hyper-V host$ accounts have full permission to SMB share (sorry, I thought this was a requirement for making hyper-v work over SMB in the first place, of course that's already done).

It says to "add servers that are running hyper-v to the protection group(s)" but that doesn't seem to be the case. Maybe it doesn't see the shared storage? I didn't bother with the registry edit because I am using Microsoft based SMB storage and that's for non-MS based storage. Is the fact the nodes/SAN are using 2012 R2, they're too new, causing this? I ran into that issue once before with the original DPM, I ended up beta testing DPM v2 just to get the feature support I needed.
JoelC707

JoelC707

Premium Member

bump

I've since rebooted all the nodes (but not the SAN) as I am in the middle is playing with a VDI deployment on them and it complained about all of them having pending restarts. So I paused and drained roles one at a time and rebooted them. Still no luck creating a protection group for the VMs.
JoelC707

JoelC707

Premium Member

Well, here's where I stand now. Apparently the issue was DPM 2012, apparently to protect Server 2012 R2 I needed DPM 2012 R2. I retried the install and it worked this time. I deleted all protection groups deleting any saved data as well and uninstalled all agents before I blew it away.

Now I can get it to backup Hyper-V natively and everything is good there. The issue I'm running into now is that for no apparent reason, some agents won't install on individual VMs. Two of them (server 2008) claim it needs .NET 4.0, so I installed that on them but it still tells me the same thing. I have other Server 2008 VMs protected so I doubt that's the issue and I assume it needs it on the client computer and not the DPM server. The other is a Server 2003 VM that gives some nondescript error about "is not a valid Win32 application".

So I'm left wondering something. If the entire VHD for the VM is backed up, do I really still need to backup individual items inside the VM (such as files or SQL databases)? I suspect it would be easier to do both from a restore standpoint but I recall seeing something about individual item level restore with Hyper-V backups so I'm wondering if I can still drill down in there and pluck out what I need during a restore?