The idea behind Hyper-V granular backups is to back up certain folders more often than the entire VM, for efficiency reasons. For example, you could back up a SQL database folder every hour via granular backup, and the entire VM each night as a full backup. Both types of backup together in one task would […]

Backing up Hyper-V to an external hard disk using eSATA or USB 3 is an efficient way to protect your Hyper-V infrastructure. As with all methods and strategies, there are advantages and disadvantages. USB drives have their own, too.   Advantages Hyper-V backup to external disks connected to a Hyper-V host is incredibly fast. A typical […]

Below is a list of requirements and recommended hardware when you set up a Hyper-V host or system. Every “modern” PC bought within the last five years will satisfy the above requirement. Here are some real world Hyper-V requirements Use really fast hard drives, ideally SSD. RAID striping probably won’t help as much as a […]

Hyper-V checkpoints, formerly called Hyper-V snapshots, are a convenient way to place a virtual machine back to an earlier state. You can use them for development and testing, for example, when you need to have an exactly identical starting point for your tests. Because the checkpoint functionality acts like it’s restoring a VM, many beginners […]

Hyper-V Pass-through Disks may be the key for better performance; however, they come with their own disadvantages and limitations, too. First of all the speed gain of using Hyper-V pass-through disks is probably overrated when compared to a fixed-sized VHDX. Estimates are that a pass-through disk may be around 15% faster due to a reduction […]

On some Linux-based network attached storage devices (NAS), such as Drobo, Synology, QNAP, etc, some users reported invalid file time stamps. It appears there is a Linux bug in the file system causing this issue. Sometimes this phenomenon appears to be related to file dates that are far in the future. It is possible that some […]

Usually when we get this question the IT admin is concerned with Hyper-V performance. Hyper-V and NTFS Block Sizes Explained Understanding the best NTFS cluster block size for Hyper-V requires an understanding of how hard drives, file systems, and Hyper-V work. However, the max. difference in performance we discovered was a mere ~10%. IT admins are […]

Setting up a free network attached storage device (NAS) is actually very simple…and free! Forget about FreeNAS, you can get the great stuff from Microsoft for free, too. If all you need is an NTFS based, 100% Windows compatible file server, there is no need to buy Drobo or Synology boxes.   How to Set […]

Differential backup software is similar to incremental backup software, but usually uses a different reference than incremental backup software. Usually the term differential backup is used in conjunction with deduplication. Deduplication is an efficient way to reduce backup storage usage when taking frequent backups. It's important to note that because backups run frequently, compression alone […]