Backup a Windows server hosted on Citrix XenApp using VAW

[RJG]

Hello,

Is it possible to backup a windows server using Veeam Agent for windows that is hosted on Citrix XenApp hypervisor?

Any help or info would be great
Thanks
RJG

[Dima P.]

Hi RJG,

Sure. You can install agent and perform backup of your windows server on a guest level.

[RJG]

Hi Dima P,

Thank you for your fast response I just wanted to check as I got a odd response from Veeam when I logged a ticket.

"Unfortunately, you won't be able to backup such machines with VAW."
"Unfortunately, requested scenario won't work, because of Citrix design(system volumes are not ensured with psychical disks in its VM's)"

[Dima P.]

Interesting. Let me check with the team.

[Dima P.]

Hi RJG,

While we are checking this functionality, can you please clarify your Citrix setup? Are you running Citrix XenServer or Citrix Desktop? If possible, please install VAW 2.0 BETA on top of Citrix Windows VM and run a backup job and share the results.

You can find fully functional beta version here.

[wolthuis]

Has anyone tested this with the latest VAW release? Does this work to backup servers or workstations on Xen?

[Dima P.]

Mike,

It was working previously, so I don’t expect any issues with latest VAW 2.1

[sc-frank]

Hey all.

This is a feature I've been waiting a very long time for.
We have a large XenServer infrastructure, with hosted VMs for multiple tenants. This has made managed backup options a real difficulty for us.

After hearing about Update 3 to Veeam B&R 9.5, allowing centralised management for Agents, I was very excited to give this a go.

I've deployed an agent on a Windows VM running under XenServer, and I'm happy to say that the backup works great.

However, when it comes to Bare metal restore, I'm sad to say that Veeam have fallen victim to the same problem that all the leading backup vendors have in this area, NIC drivers on WinRE..
When you boot the BMR ISO, there is no network connectivity. If you get to a command prompt, you can find that it does detect a NIC, but uses the default Realtek driver, instead of the XenServer PV Network driver. The Realtek driver either doesn't work at all, or works but limits throughput to 100Mbps, which is way too slow for recovering an entire machine in a disaster scenario. The BMR ISO was created from the VM with the driver installed, so it should have been included in the media, but this doesn't seem to work.

I'm going to have a play to see if there's any way of getting the driver loaded, but previous attempts at this have always proven unsuccessful.

This is such a shame, as Veeam is our favourite backup product, but this is a major roadblock for us and stops us from using it entirely, for our XenServer backup solution.

I'd be very keen to work with anyone on this who has experience with the WinRE, NIC drivers and Citrix, to see if there's a solution..

Frank

[Mike Resseler]

But in the meantime, Frank above found the solution and shared it with everyone: post269017.html#p269017

Again, nice work!

[iEzJay]

Hello,

I've followed Frank's suggestion and while this works with Windows I am unable to get Linux to boot properly. Just sits there without any response.

Cheers,
Jon

[Dima P.]

Hello Jon,

I've moved the original question to Linux sub forums to make sure that Linux gurus wont miss it (since this sub forum is related mainly to Windows agent and all functionality around it). Cheers!

[qster]

Hi, I' m new here. Is possible to backup VMs which are on XENserver?

[DGrinev]

Hi qster, welcome to the community!

You can protect Windows VMs hosted on XEN hypervisor by Veeam Agent for Windows, it was tested a couple of times by our customers.
Please read this thread above for additional information.

Thanks!