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Optimizing Hyper-V protection
Updated: January 15, 2013
Automatically add new virtual machines for protection
Add custom cluster resource type
Enable cache
When you protect a large number (over 200 virtual machines) of virtual machines that use CSV, it can take a long time, more than 15 min, to populate the inquiry screen in the Create New Protection Group Wizard. You can avoid this time latency if you enable caching on the primary DPM server. After you enable caching, when you expand the data source on the inquiry screen, DPM will refresh the resource groups under that node, but the virtual machines under each resource group will be populated from the cache. The default time-out for the cache is 48 hours. You can change this by editing the registry.
To enable caching, create a new registry key, called CacheInquiryResults at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft Data Protection Manager\Configuration. Under this key, create the DWORD InquiryResultsTimeoutInterval.
After you create the registry key, you will see the Clear Cache button on the inquiry page of the Create New Protection Group wizard. Click this button when you want to force DPM to refresh the list of virtual machines.
 Note |
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| When you click Clear Cache, DPM will refresh the entire cache, and not just the cache of the selected resource group. |
Exclude page file churns
To improve the performance of your Hyper-V backups, choose the option not to back up the entire churn in your pagefile. This gives you the benefit of reduced storage requirement and improvement in backup performance. Excluding pagefiles, DPM does not affect replica creation and consistency check. The only change is that when the pagefile is excluded, DPM does not perform incremental backups on the pagefile. To exclude pagefiles, perform the following procedure:
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Move the pagefile for a virtual machine to a different VHD.
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Exclude pagefiles by using the Set-DPMGlobalProperty cmdlet. For more information about how to use this cmdlet, see Set-DPMGlobalProperty.
Automatically add new virtual machines for protection
While a protection agent is deployed on the host machine, you still need to manually add the new machines to the protection groups. You can automate the process of adding new virtual machines to a protection group by using the following scripts:
Click the script name above to download the script.
Automatically add stand-alone virtual machines
The AddNewStandAloneVM.ps1 script does the following:
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Takes the FQDN of the protected server and the name of the protection group as input.
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Searches for the protected server and the protection group.
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Runs an inquiry on the Hyper-V host and obtains the list of unprotected virtual machines.
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Adds this list of virtual machines to the protection group.
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Saves the changes to the protection group and exits the procedure.
The script takes two parameters:
| Parameter | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
|
Server name |
Fully Qualified Domain Name of the Hyper-V host server. |
hyperv01.contoso.com |
|
Protection group |
Name of the existing protection group to which you add the new virtual machines. |
Protection Group 3 |
Automatically add clustered virtual machines
The AddNewClusteredVM.ps1 script does the following:
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Takes the FQDN of the protected cluster and the name of the protection group as input.
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Searches for the protected cluster and the protection group.
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Runs an inquiry on the cluster to get the list of resource groups.
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Runs a parallel inquiry for each resource group and obtains the list of unprotected virtual machines under them.
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Adds the unprotected virtual machines to the protection group.
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Saves the changes to the protection group and exits the procedure.
The script takes two parameters:
| Parameter | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
|
Server name |
Fully Qualified Domain Name of the Hyper-V host server. |
hyperv01.contoso.com |
|
Protection group |
Name of the existing protection group to which you add the new virtual machines. |
Protection Group 3 |
Add custom cluster resource type
If you use a non-Microsoft cluster service, DPM does not discover your cluster automatically. For DPM to recognize and list the cluster, you must edit the registry.
|
Key |
Software\Microsoft\Microsoft Data Protection Manager\Agent\Cluster |
|
Value |
PhysicalDiskResourceType |
|
Data |
Type of the non-Microsoft cluster disk service |
|
Type |
REG_SZ |
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For additional resources, see Information and Support for System Center 2012.
Tip: Use this query to find online documentation in the TechNet Library for System Center 2012. For instructions and examples, see Search the System Center 2012 Documentation Library.
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