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Thursday, July 31, 2014

Backup Hyper-V Host Using Windows Azure Backup

 

Do you have any remotes site? Most of my customer has a remote site with probably 1 or 2 Hyper-V host. They may not want to invest heavily on backup solution. Once of the solution is using Windows Azure Backup to protect your virtual machine to the cloud.

At the moment of writing [dated- 31 July 2014], the backup pricing for SEA region cost about

Compressed data stored per month Price
First 5GB / month FREE
Greater than 5GB / Month $0.28 per GB per month

For other region, please check price here. The price is cheap and yet provide a protection to your remote site Hyper-V Host. Interest to configure, do check out below configuration

Process:-

  • Create Vault
  • Create & Upload Certificate
  • Install Backup Agent
  • Configure Backup

Create Vault

1. Create new backup Vault on Microsoft Azure Management Portal

Click +NEW | Data Services | Recovery Services | Backup Vault

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Create & Upload Certificate

2. Create client certificate by using makecert on the server

C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.1\bin\x64>makecert.exe -r -pe -n CN=AzureBackupCert -ss my -sr localmachine -eku 1.3.6.1.5.5.7.3.2 -len 2048 -e 01/01/2016  AzureBackupCert.cer

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3. Upload Certificate that you have created on step 2 into Management Portal.

On the vault | Click Manage Certificate | Upload the certificate

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Install Backup Agent

4. Install Windows Backup features on Hyper-V Host

Use Server Manager to add Windows Backup features

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5. Download and Install backup agent on the Hyper-V host. Link is available on the Vault dashboard

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Select “ Agent for Windows Server & System Center”

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After install the agent, open Windows Backup. Click on Windows Azure Backup and register your server.

Click Register Server on the action pane

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Select your certificate and vault that you’ve created on earlier step

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Generate Passphase key and store in safe location

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Configure Backup

Last step to protect your remote Hyper-V Host is configure Backup Schedule

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Select your Virtual machine

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Configure when backup to start and time

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Click on Change Properties to define throttling bandwidth.

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Set retention range. You can define 7, 15 or 30 days retention range

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Backup in progress. You can monitor from windows backup console.

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VM has backup to cloud. Backup data is compressed to reduce storage usage in Azure.

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Meanwhile, on Azure Management Portal indicated 1 server is protected and total of 5+ GB data is stored

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View Protected Items history such as recovery point and when last backup.

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Click on Servers, to view server which has protected by Windows Azure Backup. You can register or remove from the Azure.

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Well, that’s all for now. Windows Azure Backup provide an alternative and inexpensive solution to protect your workload to Azure. Do check out our previous post:-