Backup plug-in Hyper-V - adding Hyper-V Servers

[raymondjt]

Hi,
after installing latest version of Hyper-V Backup Plug In on a standalone Win 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V Server, you have to configure a storage pool.
We added additional 3 TB netto (RAID-1) on one server (see above - standalone Hyper-V). It's okay. Tried to install Dedup-Disk, had no correct iSCSI license, install told me no DD-Plugin was there.
We fixed the license and we made the Dedup-Disk of 512 GB size. Would a free license for the iSCSI server work?

1. -> What is the recommended size of this Dedup-Disk? Total Storage Pool could be 3 TB large.

If we try to add the failover cluster as an additional Hyper-V Server, we first was trapped, because the Username is not 'domain\winuser', worked with 'root' and so on.
Please make the install routine clearer in this point.

2. -> Can we add a failover-hyper-v-cluster-node as a source-server, without creating a storage pool???

3. -> If a storage pool is essential on each Hyper-V source, then how big should it be?

4. -> Can the contents moved to my central storage pool?

Thx
Raymond

[Anatoly (staff)]

Hello, raymondjt.

1. You may use free license for your ISCSI server, it has all Dedup-Disk features you need for storage pool.
2. There are no particular recommendations for Storage Pool Dedup-Disk size. However, please make sure you have enough RAM for cache(2 MB per 1 GB of DD).
3. You need to install backup plug-in (and configure a storage pool) on each node of your cluster. Also please note that you should initiate backup jobs from active cluster nodes.
4. You can create one Dedup-Disk and use it as storage pool on each server.

[raymondjt]

Hi Anatoly,
3.) + 4.) do you mean, I could create a huge dedup-disk on the standalone hyper-v server,
use starwindsoftware free edition to "share" this iscsi-dedup-target to the failover-cluster-nodes?

The 'initiate backup jobs from active cluster nodes' advice is okay, but what about live-migration and/or fail-over situations?
Does the backup plugin recognize that the source server is not on the original node?

Thx
Raymond

[Anatoly (staff)]

3.) + 4.) do you mean, I could create a huge dedup-disk on the standalone hyper-v server,
use starwindsoftware free edition to "share" this iscsi-dedup-target to the failover-cluster-nodes?

Yes, why not?

what about live-migration and/or fail-over situations?

Current version of backup doesn`t process such situations very well, so it is recommended that your VMs will not failover somewhere on the time of the backup. We are working to get this improved.