BackupAssist: Hyper-V Host Level Backup & Guest File Retrieval

This is something that is the ideal.  Consider the typical host level backup with DPM (Data Protection Manager).  It uses VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Service) to bring the VM into a state where everything can be backed up at the VHD level without service interruption or inside VM corruption.  The problem with this is that you are backing up the state of the VM and a restore means you have to restore the entire VM.  Yes, you can restore that 100GB VHD, mount the VHD and get the file(s).  But that’s time consuming and slow.  It’s also manual.

That means you are typically putting backup agents on the host and in the VM.  The host level one is good for DR and the VM level one is good for operational backup/recovery.  The problem is the time to set it up, potentially the licensing costs (with 3rd party solutions), the amount of storage required and the amount of time/traffic required for a backup window.

A company called BackupAssist seems to get this.  I’ve never heard of them before and I cannot vouch for their product or their company.  But they are pointing the way forward.  The have a solution called BackupAssist v5 that will backup at the host level.  You can then restore any file from within the backed up VHD’s.  On the face of it, it appears they are doing this VHD mounting process through a GUI.  It also looks quite cheap.  If I was a SME looking for a backup solution for my Hyper-V servers, I’d definitely have to give their demo a good test.