With MSP360 Backup 7.4, we are introducing a significant improvement for Hyper-V and VMware backups. The new version comes with new backup format support for Hyper-V backups, Hyper-V Cluster support, the beta version of Changed Block Tracking for Hyper-V, and improved application-consistent backups for both Hyper-V and VMware.
New Backup Format for Hyper-V
Starting from version 7.4, the new backup format is supported for Hyper-V backups, and we also introduce several key features for Hyper-V backups:
- GFS retention policy: optimize storage size with GFS rotation schemes
- Backup consistency checks: verify that all the files required for a restore exist in your backup image, and that there are no data-loss or corruption issues.
We have implemented mandatory and full consistency checks. The mandatory check is enabled by default. It verifies that all the files required for a restore exist in the storage intact and that it includes only the latest full backup and all subsequent incrementals. The full consistency check takes longer, but includes all backups based on the selected backup plan.
- Client-side data deduplication: MSP360 Backup detects duplicate blocks of files on a source machine and uploads only unique blocks to the storage in order to reduce backup time and bandwidth consumption.
- Immutability: data is protected from being modified or deleted within a period defined in your data retention settings.
- Increased object size limits: object size is increased from 5 TB to 256 TB, regardless of the storage provider’s limitations.
- Synthetic full backup support: get faster backups, since only the changed data is uploaded to the cloud to build the full backup based on the data uploaded previously.
- Accelerated incremental backups
Hyper-V Cluster Support
With an option to back up virtual machines on the Hyper-V Failover Cluster, MSP360 Backup allows you to back up virtual machines from separate nodes inside one Hyper-V cluster. Please note that Hyper-V cluster backup is available in the new backup format only, and currently connection to the remote cluster is not supported, so the instance must be installed on one of the cluster nodes.
A Failover Cluster is a group of Hyper-V server nodes that are configured to work together to balance the computing loads and to provide redundancy and failover to your virtual machines with little or no downtime. Learn more about Hyper-V clustering in the Manage virtualization servers section of the Microsoft documentation.
Improved Backup Efficiency with Changed Block Tracking for Hyper-V
We are announcing the public beta of CBT (Changed Block Tracking) for Hyper-V as part of the MSP360 Backup for Windows 7.4 release.
In Hyper-V terms, Changed Block Tracking is called Resilient Change Tracking
CBT technology allows MSP360 customers to take advantage of much faster incremental backups for their virtual machines, which is achieved by the reduced time required to identify and read changed blocks of data on a virtual machine.
CBT with MSP360 Backup is supported for Windows 10 and later, and Windows Server 2016 and later.
Improved Application-Consistent Backup for Hyper-V and VMware
Version 7.4 also comes with application-consistent backup of Hyper-V virtual machines and advanced options to configure an application-consistent backup for VMware.
To configure the application-consistent backup settings for VMware, proceed to the Select Virtual Machines step of the backup wizard and click the Advanced settings button. For application-consistent backup of VMware server, you can now pick one of the following options:
- Back up virtual machines with application-consistency issues.
- Skip virtual machines with application-consistency issues.
- Do not use application-consistent backup.
For application-consistent backup on Hyper-V server, the software performs backup based on the checkpoints configuration of the source virtual machine.
Availability
Currently, the new backup format for Hyper-V backups, Hyper-V Cluster support, the beta version of Changed Block Tracking for Hyper-V, and application-consistent backups for both Hyper-V and VMWare are available in MSP360 Backup for Windows 7.4 and later with VM license and CloudBerry Backup 7.4 and later VM edition.
Conclusion
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