I was in that original discussion you referenced and have done the hot standby VM solution.
There are a few products out there that can do this. The one I’ve hands-on time with is Zerto. It runs in the VMWare kernel and hooks into the file system. After the initial seeding it will then transmit all filesystem deltas to the target system hosting the standby (also running VMWare and using the VMWare API). It’s like RAID 1 for servers. If the fit hits the shan the standby can be spun up in the time it takes to start a VM (typically less then four minutes, varies) and, voila, your server is back up and running with data current to the last transmitted packet. This is what you’re calling a “hot clone.” That’s the 10,000 foot view. From: Richard Stovall Sent: Wednesday, September 11, 2013 10:26 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [NTSysADM] In defense of image-based VM backups Hot backups are definitely still part of the arsenal. I was asking about hot-clones, which seem to be an implied possibility? I don't know how to create one. Damien, maybe this question is for you. Is it possible to clone a running VM without going through the backup and restore process? (I don't use any System Center products, if that helps.) Thanks, RS On Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 11:14 PM, Jon Harris <[email protected]> wrote: Hot-backups were possible for Hyper-V under 2008, I only did them by whole hardware backup and never tried to pull just the hot VMs. I would hope that has been improved. Jon ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Sep 2013 23:05:12 -0400 Subject: Re: [NTSysADM] In defense of image-based VM backups From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Perhaps. This is in Hyper-V 2012. I am still on the fat part of that learning curve, so, perhaps. Is there a way to do a hot-clone? The restore to sandbox is a clone, it's just a new vm made from a backup of the source. On Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 10:58 PM, Damien Solodow <[email protected]> wrote: Couldn't you have just cloned the existing VM to make your sandbox; no VM backup required? DAMIEN SOLODOW Systems Engineer 317.447.6033 (office) 317.447.6014 (fax) HARRISON COLLEGE ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: [email protected] [[email protected]] on behalf of Richard Stovall [[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, September 11, 2013 10:53 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [NTSysADM] In defense of image-based VM backups There was a discussion here a few weeks ago that centered on image-based backups for entire VMs vs data-based backups of applications only. My recollection is that most of us smaller guys prefer (or at least lean toward) the image-based variety, and the bigger, more mature orgs prefer data backups. I'm going to offer an example of the utility of image-based backups for small shops. My IT department consists of one other admin and me. We support a fairly complex IT environment for a company of our diminutive size. We recently went whole hog into MSCRM (on-premises), and our developers (we have more of them than IT staff) are working hard to customize it to suit the company's needs. Today I had to roll back a CRM org database to an earlier point in time for the devs, and at first blush it appeared to be a successful endeavor. Some funky issues arose, however, so I was faced with a difficult problem and no clear direction on how to solve it. (MSCRM is an enormous beast, btw.) Long story short, having the ability to (almost) immediately spin up a brand new, sandboxed copy of the CRM server allowed me to experiment and figure out how to resolve the problem without touching the one the devs actually use. This helped me document the proper fix and apply it in their environment in (literally) a few minutes. I could not have done this without the benefits of A) virtualization and B) the ability to create an exact clone of the affected machine. There are lots of benefits to virtualization, and private clouds, and all of the rest of the buzzwords currently on the IT bingo cards. But, to me, the greatest of these accrue to rank and file admins when confronted with the kind of situation I faced today. It's really cool stuff that could not have been accomplished quickly without virtualization and image-based backups. PS Full disclosure. I also do native SQL backups of the CRM databases within the VMs, and the restoration of one of these in SQL Management Studio was an integral part of the final solution. I guess this is a blended/hybrid solution, but it wouldn't have been easy without being able to instantly create a sandbox to test in, and that's an example of the power of image-based backups for the small IT shop.
