Users Guide

Using ASM/ME with Hyper-V
Hyper-V enables you to create a virtualized server computing environment. When ASM/ME is installed on a system running
Hyper-V, you can create point-in-time Smart Copies of entire VMs from which you can recover data or entire VMs.
Hyper-V also enables you to run a client virtual machine (also called a guest O/S) in child partitions. Guest O/S can have
different operating systems, such as Linux, or different versions of Windows in each virtual machine.
● Smart Copies—Smart Copies are crash consistent, unless the VM is running both an O/S and an application that has
awareness of Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). In such cases, you can create application-consistent Smart Copies.
NOTE: You can create Smart Copies of rapid-provisioned VMs (using SCVMM), but the volumes do not have user-
visible mount points.
● Guest O/S—Other operating systems, including different Windows versions and Linux can participate as a guest O/S.
Specific configurations of Windows Server 2012 R2 that have the optional Integration Services (or Virtual Guest Services)
and other requisite software installed are considered Hyper-V aware. Also, specific applications, such as Exchange, are
qualified as being Hyper-V aware.
See the Host Integration Tools for Microsoft Release Notes for a list of operating systems that are supported by ASM/ME.
Topics:
• Hyper-V Requirements
• Hyper-V Specific Operations
• Cluster Shared Volumes
Hyper-V Requirements
Hyper-V requires the following:
● An x64 computer running the 64-bit version of Windows Server 2012 R2 or later.
● Your computer must comply with the BIOS setting requirements specified by Microsoft.
● Integration Services (Virtual Guest Services) components must be installed on every Windows guest operating system to
support online backup and data exchange. See the Microsoft Hyper-V documentation for installation information about
Integration Services.
● ASM/ME is limited by the current functions offered by the Hyper-V VSS writer.
● Running SQL Server or Exchange with a virtual machine does not provide ASM/ME options such as Recovery Mailbox
Database and Verification. You only get a copy and restore of the entire virtual machine.
● As with operations on SQL and Exchange, ASM/ME automatically detects multiple-writer objects and prevents you from
creating a multiple writer Smart Copy Set.
See the Host Integration Tools for Microsoft Release Notes for the most recent constraints for ASM/ME support of Hyper-V.
Hyper-V Supported Configuration
Dell supports only one configuration for ASM/ME support of Hyper-V for full Smart Copies, illustrated in the following figure.
In this scenario:
● Application data is stored on a VHD that is contained in an iSCSI target provisioned on the host.
● The VM boots to the VHD on the iSCSI target provisioned on the host.
● VSS-based backup of the VMs from the host O/S is supported.
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