Best practices for Data Protection for Microsoft Hyper-V

You can follow best practices to take advantage of features that can help you manage Data Protection for Microsoft Hyper-V operations.

Excluding virtual machines from scheduled backup operations

If a virtual machine (VM) is undergoing maintenance operations or if it is a test VM that does not need to be backed up regularly, you can exclude it from scheduled backup operations. Instead of updating the client options file (dsm.opt) on every data mover, consider excluding the VMs in the schedule definition on the IBM Spectrum Protect™ server.

The IBM Spectrum Protect server administrator can accomplish this task by adding the -vm=vmname1,vmname2 parameter to the option string on the schedule definition on a server.

For example, the administrator defined the following schedule on the IBM Spectrum Protect server:

define schedule hyperv_domain_name schedule_name 
description=schedule_description action=backup subaction=VM 
starttime=NOW+00:10 schedstyle=Classic period=1 perunits=Weeks 
durunits=minutes duration=10 options='-vmbackuptype=fullvm 
-asnodename=Hyper-V_host_hv_tgt -mode=IFIncremental 
-domain.vmfull="all-vm"'

To exclude a VM named testvm1 from scheduled backup operations, update the -domain.vmfull option in the schedule definition as follows:

define schedule hyperv_domain_name schedule_name 
description=schedule_description action=backup subaction=VM 
starttime=NOW+00:10 schedstyle=Classic period=1 perunits=Weeks 
durunits=minutes duration=10 options='-vmbackuptype=fullvm 
-asnodename=Hyper-V_host_hv_tgt -mode=IFIncremental 
-domain.vmfull="all-vm;-vm=testvm1"'

To exclude one or more VMs that begin with the name testvm, update the -domain.vmfull option in the schedule definition as follows:

define schedule hyperv_domain_name schedule_name 
description=schedule_description action=backup subaction=VM 
starttime=NOW+00:10 schedstyle=Classic period=1 perunits=Weeks 
durunits=minutes duration=10 options='-vmbackuptype=fullvm 
-asnodename=Hyper-V_host_hv_tgt -mode=IFIncremental 
-domain.vmfull="all-vm;-vm=testvm*"'

For more information about the -domain.vmfull option, see Domain.vmfull.

Tip: Depending on the system configuration, the node name can also contain a prefix and suffix. For more information, see Customizing node names.

Rebinding virtual machines to management classes

If you need to override the management class that is bound to virtual machines (VMs) by the vmmc option in the client options file, you can use the include.vm option to bind the VMs to a new management class.

In a cluster environment, you must set the include.vm option in the options file (dsm.opt) on all the hosts.

For instance, you want to back up the VMs in your test environment, but you do not want the same retention period for the test VM backups as specified by the STANDARD management class. In this case, you can rebind the test VMs to a management class that has a shorter retention period for backups.

For example, to rebind all VMs with names that begin with testvm with the management class named NONPRODMC, add the following statement to the client options file (dsm.opt):

include.vm vmtest* NONPRODMC

For more information and examples about the include.vm option, see Vmmc.