How are you backing up Windows VMs? Veeam not working on VM

[ChaosBlades]

How is everyone backing up their Windows bhyve VMs?

Snapshots don't work because it is a zvol, right?
Replication of the zvol would double the size for each backup and the VM needs to be shutdown to replicate, right?

I have tried a fresh Windows VM multiple times and the Veeam service will not start on a Windows bhyve VM.

 

[Samuel Tai]

No, you can snapshot zvols. It's recommended to shutdown the VM before taking a snapshot, as there's no support for suspend or quiescing disk activity in bhyve.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Snapshots and incremental zfs send | zfs receive works the same as with datasets. Using such a backup is pretty much like pulling the plug of a Windows machine at that point in time. If you are reasonably convinced your applications inside the VM can deal with that, fine.

I use it all the time.

 

[ChaosBlades]

Excellent, that works for me. I am using my VM just to host applications with complex configurations to keep my main machines lean. Which allows me to format on a whim and not need to install the same app and duplicate configurations between multiple machines. Not usually anything running constantly on the VM. I usually RDP in, do a thing, close applications, then terminate the session. So it should be fine. Thanks.

 

[Yorick]

If you are chill with trying a fresh VM, try this.

- Create a zvol for your VM with 4k block size
- Specify this (VirtIO) when creating the VM

This may hurt throughput a little, but should allow SQL Express to start.

I am also playing around with a VHDX and moving the user folder, but I'm not sure of success yet.