Syncovery backup config guide for backup up Hyper-V VHD's

This post has been provided for the benefit of digitalwelcomemat IT customers.
Treat this information as informative only and do not take actions or make decisions on the basis of the information contained here. All IT decisions and actions should be made after consultation with your chosen IT professional taking into account all the of the relevant factors.

This example is for backup to a rotating USB HDD that is taken off site each evening. The VHD is encrypted for security in case the drive is lost or stolen. As a consequence of the encryption the backup software can't use delta/partial copy. In this instance a very limited number of versions are being kept.

In the screenshot below, 1. Backup ID included in job name so that email notifications will be correct. 2. only one back job required as no partial file update.

In the screenshot below: (1) Using exact mirror with delayed deletion (set in configure see 2.) 3. Scheduled to run nightly.

In the screenshot below: 1. Delay deletion by 14 day just in case something unexpected happens and a source VHD gets deleted

In the screenshot below: 1. Create VSS snap shot before copy, required if VM is running

In the screenshot below: 1. Under files only 1 file is copied at once

In the screenshot below: 3. on deletions tab move deletions to a specified folder

In the screenshot below: 1 Specify folder for deleted items

In the screenshot below: for VHD's that are being replicated you can exclude the *.hrl files

In the screenshot below: Unattended safety specify suitable settings

In the screenshot below: 1. Setup appropriate retention based on VHD size and available HDD space. 2. Set to move to a sub folder

In the screenshot below: Set to zip with no compression. This (hopefully reduces CPU resources?). Note that the only reason you are compressing is that its required by encryption.

Remember that part copy and encryption wont work together (even if the program allows you it set it up that way and doesn't warn you)

In the screenshot below: 1. Set to encrypt using a standard zip file. (Std zip means that it can be opened in WINRAR or 7-Zip). 2. Enter and RECORD the encryption password

Remember that part copy and encryption wont work together (even if the program allows you it set it up that way and doesn't warn you)

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Identifying monitor connection plugs/sockets:

 If you have a pair of Hyper-V "host" servers setup to replicate this allows you to do a manual fail-over to the "other" host server if one of the physical servers fails. Consider carefully if this is something that you might choose to do if you can't contact me for an extended period of time. It's not something you would hopefully ever need to do on your own without IT support, however, the instructions are below.

Note that, once this is done, leave the other server off and even unplugged, you *really* don’t want the old server coming back on again and conflicting with the "failed-over" servers.

Logon to the working physical host server where you would like to start-up the Hyper-V replica and open the Hyper-V management console.
You can see in the screenshot below there are two virtual machines on this host server, "PRINT" (see 1 below) which is a replica from the other server which you can see by the replication health (see 2 below) and is in the "Off" state which is the normal state of a replica. There is also an example machine that is running on this server called EXAMPLE .

We are going to ignore EXAMPLE and leave it on and just concentrate on starting up PRINT which is the replica from the failed server. (continued below)

 Right click on PRINT (the replica that is currently off) click on replication (see 4 below) and then fail-over (see 5 below) (continued below)

Read over the warning, check the date and time of the most recent recover point (to make sure that its recent). In this instance the failed server was set to replicate every 15 minutes but check just in case it hasn’t been working for some reason and this data is very old. Click fail-over (see 6 below)  (continued below)

The replica will start and will be available shortly at the same network address and in all other respects should be exactly the same as before except that the data may be up to 15 minutes old. You can see now that PRINT is running (see 7 below) and it is starting up in the background (see 8 below)

Note that the other host server "EXAMPLE" is running still also.

Some final clean-up needs to be done as soon as possible. As you can see there is now a warning in the replication, because its waiting for the issue to be resolved and the replication to be setup again in reverse (see 9 below). Also there is a replica snapshot/checkpoint (see 10 below) which should be resolved as soon as possible to ensure that backups contain the current and correct data. However, your server should be up and running and this entire process should take less than 15 minutes.

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This post has been provided for the benefit of digitalwelcomemat IT customers.
Treat this information as informative only and do not take actions or make decisions on the basis of the information contained here. All IT decisions and actions should be made after consultation with your chosen IT professional taking into account all the of the relevant factors.

To update a device "driver" from Microsoft follow the steps below, you will need to be logged on to an account that has administrative privileges.

Note that this process will update the device driver based on the most current one that Microsoft has (if any). You may need to download a specific driver from the manufacturer of the device to get the full functionality or if microsoft does not have one.

1. Right click on the windows start button
2. Click on computer management

Once the Windows computer management opens:

1. Click on device manager
2. expand the device group, such as display adapters shown below
3. Right click on the device you would like to update
4. Click on update driver software

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This post has been provided for the benefit of digitalwelcomemat IT customers.
Treat this information as informative only and do not take actions or make decisions on the basis of the information contained here. All IT decisions and actions should be made after consultation with your chosen IT professional taking into account all the of the relevant factors.