Linux Backup Software when Virtualizing

Look into Unitrends free edition.

Zero1 wrote: ↑ Look into Unitrends free edition.

As someone who has tried the edition at home, and uses the enterprise version at work, I say stay far away. We are looking to replace this POS.

I will admit the free edition worked okay for a while, but it would for some reason never clean up properly and kept running out of space. If you are using windows you could just use built in Windows Backup which will backup Hyper-V, unfortunately it does a full backup every time, so takes a full backup cycle every time. Could also use Veeam, I'm a big fan of them and this is what I use at home now, they have a free version, I got a paid version, the free version doesn't do scheduling if I recall correctly.

I don't really understand your description regarding "underneath". If I understand correctly, currently, your Hyper-V host, is also your actual desktop with software on it, and you want to move away from this setup and have a host just do host duties, and a VM on this host as your desktop (I assume you will be RDPing into it?) You mentioned Autocad, which is graphics card intensive. I never playing with GPU passthrough into the VM in Hyper-V, but I believe it's possible, you should really look into this.

The software I mentioned will just backup things at VM level, so if your desktop VM is screwed, can just restore the whole VM and be back in business. You would install this backup software on your host. Veeam for example is also able to backup physical machines, so you could use Veeam to backup all your VMs, and backup the host running the VMs if you really wanted to, or just use Windows Update. Windows Update does work, it's pretty simple, but I believe it only allows you to restore whole VM, and not say a file within the VM.

If you want to backup from within the VM itself, just keep using whatever you are using now. I don't really know the backup product you mentioned, but whatever works on a physical box should work just the same inside the VM. Most people (and companies) prefer to backup a whole VM, as it's quick, and with proper paid software you can actually restore individual files from a full VM backup.

Don't know if that helps as I don't really understand your terminology, "underneath" part threw me off, ur host would be underneath your VM, your description seems to point the opposite direction.

That is interesting because I have never had an issue with regards to this product. Their support is also amazing as well with a paid license.

Veeam is another product i definitely recommend and I find it REALLY easy to use (great UI and simple to setup). Eblend is right about the rest of his/her post.

Zero1 wrote: ↑ That is interesting because I have never had an issue with regards to this product. Their support is also amazing as well with a paid license.

Veeam is another product i definitely recommend and I find it REALLY easy to use (great UI and simple to setup). Eblend is right about the rest of his/her post.

Also recommend Veeam. All free, and also has a linux backup client. I believe they also offer free hyper-v backup software too so you can run it on the host and backup the VM's, but I haven't tried that yet. They also have great support if you need it.

Zero1 wrote: ↑ That is interesting because I have never had an issue with regards to this product. Their support is also amazing as well with a paid license.

We actually had Veeam in to our office today as we are looking at getting rid of all our Unitrends. It's been terrible for us. Last year I was at the Microsoft Ignite conference and was in a session where the guy asked if anyone else uses a product that wasn't on the presentation slide, I put up my hand and had a chat after, and he pretty much gave me the "Sorry to hear that" look. I haven't heard anyone say anything positive about unitrends ever...but then again...I haven't heard of Unitrends until I started working here. We have yet to be able to successfully recover anything from their cloud space...a sql recovery wouldn't work...because it couldn't contact the original sql server it was backed up from...yah because it was gone...thus the reason for the restore. Things like that is why we hate it and going to get rid of it this year.

may want to try Altaro - Link to free-for-2-VMs