Posted over in the RDS forum and got pointed over here.

I just want to know what is the best way to backup my RDS environment is. Its a 4 node hyper v cluster(compute) and a 2 node scale out file server(Storage). 

We have another hyper v cluster (for servers) that we backup using DPM. That works but that would be a TON of data transfer for doing the 150 virtual machines we have in our RDS setup.

Please advise.

• Edited by JustusIV 14 hours 0 minutes ago

Hi Justus,

I would assume many of your RDS-servers are identical and protecting all of them would not be optimal.

Look into what you have to be able to restore and what could be recreated.
For example, the user profiles is probably the highest priority to be able to restore but when it comes to the RDS-servers, you probably have a template to spin up new RDS-server when needed. Then it would make no sense of protection individual RDS-servers when you can protect the template itself.

So depending on how your RDS environment is configured I would make sure that I could restore all user related information and the configuration for the environment.

Then there is always your SLAs that have to be accounted for:
How long should it take to restore a file, a user-profile etc?
How much time of data can we loose? (backup frequency) 
In case of a disaster-scenario, how long can our RDS-service be offline? The questions goes on..

Remember to always think Restore instead of Backup and you will probably find a suitable solution for your environment!

Kind Regards
Markus Eliasson

These are Personal collection type in RDS. Meaning every machine is potentially unique and owned by a single user.

I guess i will just throw together a DPM box and backup the hyper v nodes like a I do our server but i am afraid of the load this is going to cause. But i guess i don't have any other options. I am surprised since i have "the standard" setup of RDS there is not a best practice guide to back it up.

 

• Edited by JustusIV 9 hours 54 minutes ago