Windows 2012 Hyper-v backup

We upgraded a Hyper V from 2008 R2 to Windows 2012. Then we copied one VHD (copy/paste) from one 2008 R2 to this new 2012 machine. Everything works well, and we decided to use a out of the box 2012 backup tool, to backup VM's. I have personally configured backup schedule to start, after midnight, and waited next day to see what will happen. I was sure that backup will work as a charm, since in 2008 I used a backup tool to backup this VM's. Ok, I was aware of thing such as: I moved from one host hd to antoher host witd hdd's configured as raid. The move was simple, shut down vm, copy vhd and configure new vm with that vhd. This VM has another vss writer, Symantec Backup Exec agent utility, but somehow

* Next day I saw in logs that backup is failing: event was : Windows Backup encountered an error when accessing the remote shared folder. Please retry the operation after making sure that the remote shared folder is available and accessible. Semaphore timed out. *

I realize that backing up vhd's as files fails. I have one 150 GB vhd and three others around 30 GB each. I tested backup on other files, works fine. Each of volumes are on bitlocker encrypthed hdd, raid 1+0 configuration, HP Proliant 380 G6 with 24 GB RAM. I am backing up to APACER volume, whis is holding another folder, it is configure as volume for backup, it is not dedicated.

Now I am struggling around to see how can I solve this non backup solution.

What I tried is to select Hyper-V in backup tool. I noticed that backup is going a really slow, and that I will takes hours/days to complete. I canceled backup several times, In some occasion my server hungs, I was not enabled to login on my server, I was 2 mins from hard restart, but I disconnected USB HDD volume for backup, and I was stucked log in process completed in seconds.

Today around 13:00 I configured backup to use Hyper-V as selection, and started it. I noticed, that backup was working somehow slow, 1 GB per time, for example 1GB goes fast, and than backup waits for 10 mins, to move ahead to another backup.

In the evening, I connected to Hyper-V host, to see, was backup successfull, and noticed that it stucks aroung 90 GB when backing up VM with 150 GB vhd.

I tried to list vss writers : vss admin list writers : I got Waiting for response, these may be delayed if a shadow copy is being prepared. Backup tool is waiting for response.

I have no idea what I can do next. I am afraid of playing around with shadow copies, etc, what is getting on my mind, is that I will go next day to location and uplug USB hdd, so backup tool will cancel operation. I do not want to restar server.

Any Idea folks, what is a safest way to stop backup, and configure it to work normally.

Revised: I have noticed in system log that event id 129 is logged : Reset to device, \Device\RaidPort1, was issued

Thanks in advance.

Solution 1:

I had the same problem, and didn't really solve the problem. However I made a workaround of copying the VHD:s to the network backup disk. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Enable your account to run PowerShell in the registry. Run Regedit and right click on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\PowerShell and select Permissions and grant your account full control privilegies. Reference.

2. Run PowerShell (with Adminstrator rights if needed) and set execution policy to Unrestricted, like this (reference): PS C:\> Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted and you'll get a confirm response Execution Policy Change The execution policy helps protect you from scripts that you do not trust. Changing the execution policy might expose you to the security risks described in the about_Execution_Policies help topic at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=135170. Do you want to change the execution policy? [Y] Yes [N] No [S] Suspend [?] Help (default is "Y"): y

3. Create a PowerShell script which copies your VHD:s to the backup location: Copy-Item -Path D:\MyVMs -Filter *.* -Destination \\BackupServer\BackupFilder -Recurse Reference.

4. Create a batch file pointing to your PowerShell Script: C:\WINDOWS\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -file C:\ScriptForBackup\BackupScript.ps1 Reference.

5. Add a task in the Task Scheduler pointing to your batch file: