Hyper-v backup what happened with checkpoints?

[Ketonal]

Hello,

Few months ago I made a checkpoint of Hyper-V 2008 Virtual machine and forgot to delete it :/ ( I know its mistake but i simply forgot ) during the time it was working on that checkpoint i made 3 or 4 backup of that vm using veeam Backup and Replication v8.

Few days ago something crash inside that vm ( some app issue) and i was asked to restore one of this backup.

And here is my problem: the jobs restore, but in state before that checkpoint and without checkpoint as file. (as there was no checkpoint ever )

Is it normal behavior ? How does veeam deals with existing checkpoints ? Does it merge it or delete it ?

I was looking for an answer but all article i can find are about checkpoint created by veeam before backup.

Can u please point me to some part of documentatnion that deals with it, or do you know some possible solution for this if exist ?

Pleas help,

Wojtek

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Wojtek,

Is it normal behavior ? How does veeam deals with existing checkpoints ? Does it merge it or delete it ?

VM checkpoints are not backed up, meaning that the image of the VM always reflects its current state at the time when backup job was initiated.

Few months ago I made a checkpoint of Hyper-V 2008 Virtual machine and forgot to delete it :/ ( I know its mistake but i simply forgot ) during the time it was working on that checkpoint i made 3 or 4 backup of that vm using veeam Backup and Replication v8.

As a tip - in order to avoid these situations in future, please take a look at Veeam ONE Free edition that can monitor VM snapshots and notify you about any issues occurred in the infrastructure.

Thank you!

[bjackson@agi.com]

Is Veeam ever going to support backing up Hyper-V checkpoints when a backup is taken? Hopefully it's on the roadmap for sometime in the near future...

[veremin]

As you can see the demand for this functionality is rather low, so, chances to see it implemented are not so big, I'd say.

However, if you shed some light on use case, it would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[bjackson@agi.com]

Hi Eremin,

Thank you for the reply. My main use case is as follows.

I operate a large set of VMs for a software development team. We have "clean" checkpoints(Hyper-V 2016) for most the VMs. These checkpoints have a a minimal set of third party software installed on them. The developers and testers are able to revert the systems back to the clean checkpoint before they run a regression test or some other test on these systems that would make them "dirty". Typically a developer or tester will leave the system in a dirty state while they attempt to understand why the software broke for a particular test. I would like to backup the VMs, but that means I need to wait for a developer to revert the system back to its clean state and then take it down for maintenance before they can run their next test against it. Sometimes a developer will need to take an interim checkpoint while they are troubleshooting, and they could be on the system for a week or two. It would be great to be able to take a backup whenever, and then restore a VM with all of the checkpoints to reduce the amount of rework needed by the dev and test team.

These are my main use cases. Please let me know if there are any other details I can add.

[Vitaliy S.]

I would like to backup the VMs, but that means I need to wait for a developer to revert the system back to its clean state and then take it down for maintenance before they can run their next test against it.

What about running VeeamZIP (active full) job for every VM that would be used for R&D, before running any tests? This should resolve this issue right now.

[veremin]

Or Quick Backup that has been designed with the described use case in mind. Thanks.

[bjackson@agi.com]

Vitaliy, that was my fall back position. But I was hoping that Veeam would actually backup the checkpoints. Right now I have to wait for all of the system to be reverted back to a checkpoint before I can take a VeeamZip.

Eremin, the Quick Backup is an option, but I feel like it's duplicating the checkpoint. I will most likely stick with Vitality's solution and wait for the next time a developer reverts a system to take a full backup.

[veremin]

It's creating an additional ad-hoc increment for selected VM(s), which seems what you're after. Anyway, feel free to stick to whatever approach you like. Thanks.