Hi community
I have been using Win 8 Hyper V, to build a number of SharePoint 2010 and 2013 test farms. Essentially, set up a windows 2012 parent disk with some common stuff such as all the browsers, fiddler and ULS logger. Thereafter, I can reference my parent disk when I create my individual child diff disks( New-VHD). Now I am able to install SharePoint 2010 or 2013 without the hassle of having install the operating system each time.
Now I want backup these diff disks ahead of testing a CU or other farm changes, so I wondered what is the best approach here:
- Use Hyper-v snapshot facility: how many of these, how often, and how reliable are these? Also, if I need to backup my snapshot files is there best practices here as to which ones I need to backup
- Go for physical backup of the my hyper-v: VHX and config files and if so what are the key files to backup. I had look at my spdev installation (see attachment) and there appears to be a load of related files – how are these created and do I need to back these all up.?
Daniel
Trevor,
Thanks for the reply
Are you saying it is not recommended to snapshot diff disks? Also, out of interest have you had any issues with snapshots failing, and what did you have to do to recover your vm?
I take your point with multi sever farm and snapshots since this would have to simultaneous across all vms..
