Whole VM backup vs in VM backup?

Question

I have Data Protection Manager 2007, and will be setting up Hyper-V on Windows Server Datacentre 2008 R2.

With Data Protection Manager, if I perform regular backups of my VMs (stored in Hyper-V), will I no longer need to perform backups of files etc in the actual VM?

Thanks

Answer 1

I think you need to do both. Here is why:

• For Disaster recovery, a full VM backup will be the fastest way to recover your VM in a crash consistent state. To mitigate the crash consistent state, you will need to quiesce your VM first. i.e. shutdown all databases and any running services. For an AD server, run a full AD backup and store the backup file on the VM prior to backing up the VM image. This way it will be available when the image comes back up after a restore, even if you have to boot to AD recovery mode.
• For the "I accidentally deleted my file last week" restores, you will want a file level backup, otherwise, you will have restore the VM image to a non-production environment, fire it up, and then copy the "lost" file. This will take much longer than having a simple file-level backup.

Answer 2

Better always backup VM in the host system - more secure, more comfortable especially if you run a lot of VMs.