About Recovery Ready for Hyper-V virtual machines
Backup Exec has introduced the Recovery Ready feature with Backup Exec 16 Feature Pack 1. With the Recovery Ready feature, you can use the Validate VM for Recovery operation to validate the recoverability of virtual machines. You must have a virtual machine that is backed up with GRT option enabled so that you can use the GRT enabled backup set to validate the virtual machine. When you create and run a Validate Virtual Machine for Recovery job, it runs tests on the virtual machine after which it is marked as recovery ready.
Recovery ready virtual machines can be used to do the following:
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Disaster recovery readiness: In a disaster recovery scenario, administrators are sure that the validated virtual machines are recoverable.
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Vault the backups to cloud or tape: Validates the backup sets before you vault them to devices such as cloud and tape.
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Audit and compliance of backups: For meeting company audit and regulatory compliance requirements, you can provide validation information of your backups for virtual machines.
When the Validate Virtual Machine for Recovery job runs, the virtual machine is registered on the Hyper-V server with the host name in the
Validate_VM name_GUID format and then and powered on. After the power-on is complete, a heartbeat check is run to check if the Hyper-V Heartbeat Service is running.
During virtual machine validation there is no data transfer.
When you create the Validate Virtual Machine for Recovery job, before the validation job runs, you can select the maximum time that is allowed for a virtual machine to boot. The default value is 10 minutes. You can select a value between 1 to 60 minutes.
After these checks are successfully completed, the virtual machine is marked as ready for recovery.
All information about the validation is part of the job log. After validation you can generate the Recovery Ready Validation Summary report to view the summary of the virtual machines that you validated.
To see the validation status, on the Backup and Restore tab, double-click the host name or on the Storage tab, double-click the disk storage name. In the left pane, click Backup Sets. For the selected server or storage view, the Validation Status is displayed.
The following table describes the process of validating Hyper-V virtual machines for recovery.
Related information
Table: Virtual machine validation process
| Step | Description |
|---|---|
| Step 1 | Add the Hyper-V server. |
| Step 2 | Take a disk-based GRT backup of the virtual machine that is hosted on the Hyper-V server. |
| The Recovery Ready feature supports full, incremental, and deferential backup sets. | |
| Step 3 | Run a Validate Virtual Machine for Recovery job for a Hyper-V virtual machine. |
| Step 4 | Backup Exec virtualizes the |
| backup set. | |
| Step 5 | Backup Exec creates an SMB share. |
| Step 6 | Backup Exec runs the following tests in the given order on the Hyper-V virtual machine being validated. |
| - Register the virtual machine | |
| - Power On the virtual machine | |
| - Heartbeat check of the virtual machine | |
| Step 7 | If all the tests are successful, Backup Exec then marks the Hyper-V virtual machine as validated. |
Tests run on a Hyper-V virtual machine being validated
The following tests are run on a Hyper-V virtual machine that is being validated.
Table: Tests run on a Hyper-V virtual machine
| Test | Description |
|---|---|
| Register the virtual machine | The first test is to register the virtual machine on the Hyper-V server. |
| Power ON the virtual machine | The second test is to power ON the registered virtual machine. |
| Heartbeat test | The third test is to check the Integration Services. If the services run successfully on the powered on virtual machine, the heartbeat test passes. |
| Integration Services must be installed and the Hyper-V Heartbeat Service must be running for Hyper-V. These services must be running so that the heartbeat check is successful on the backed up virtual machine. If Integration Services are not installed, the validation job fails and for the corresponding backup set, Validation failed status is displayed. |
All information that is related to the test results is also available in the job log.
Validation status for a Hyper-V virtual machine
During validation, the following statuses are displayed for the backup set of a Hyper-V virtual machine:
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Validation successful: The backup set has passed all tests and is recovery ready.
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Validation failed: The backup set has failed the tests and is not recovery ready.
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Unable to validate: The virtual machine is not validated because of environmental issues. Hence, the backup sets cannot be validated.
If the Hyper-V Heartbeat Service is disabled at the time of backup, validation fails but the backup set is marked as Unable to validate.
During validation the following statuses are displayed for the validation job of a Hyper-V virtual machine:
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Successful: The validation job has passed all tests and the virtual machine is recovery ready.
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Success with Exceptions: The validation job has passed all tests but when there is a clean-up of resources that are used for validation, the power off fails.
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Failed: The validation job has failed the tests or validation is not performed.
If validation fails or Backup Exec is unable to validate a virtual machine for recovery, you can check the validation job log for more details.
The following matrix gives details about the tests and validation status.
Table: Validation status for a Hyper-V virtual machine
| Validation test | Backup set status | Validation job status | Further steps/Reason for failure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Register virtual machine | If registration is successful, go to the next check. | If registration is successful, go to the next check. | If registration is successful, go to the next check. |
| Register virtual machine | Validation failed | Failed | Backup set issue |
| Register virtual machine | Unable to validate | Failed | Environment issue |
| Power ON virtual machine | If power ON is successful, go to the next check. | If power ON is successful, go to the next check. | If power ON is successful, go to the next check. |
| Power ON virtual machine | Unable to validate | Failed | Connectivity issue or check not attempted as registration failed |
| Heartbeat check | Unable to validate | Failed | Test not attempted |
| Heartbeat check | Validation failed | Failed | Boot issue or Integration Services issue |
| Heartbeat check | Validation successful | Successful | Virtual machine is validated and recovery ready |
See Requirements for validating a Hyper-V virtual machine for recovery.
See Notes about validating a Hyper-V virtual machine for recovery.
See Creating a validate virtual machine for recovery.