We are trying to have 2 levels of backup for SQL servers. We back them up via SQL itself and then back these flat files up to disk and tape. That's great if we need SQL data recovery but we also would like some sort of Bare Metal Recovery option too. I am thinking Hyper-V host level backup of the whole SQL Virtual Machine if that is supported. This way if something happens the Hyper-V host or the Virtual OS we also have a good recovery strategy. So my questions to help with this are:
1. Is it safe and supported to back up a SQL (or Exchange 2010 for that matter) virtual server by using Hyper-V 2008 R2 Host level backup (Child Partition Snapshot)? Or is there anything different for a SQL VM than a plain vanilla OS build? We are using Cluster Shared Volumes and have a hardware snapshot provider.
I have found plenty of articles about backing up SQL 2008 R2 using DPM 2010 but they all talk about using the DPM agent in the SQL virtual machine. I couldn't find any host level Hyper-v articles that mention SQL specifically.
2. Does it make a difference if the SQL server is using any sort of replication/mirroring/log shipping features etc?
3. Can anyone point me to a good article on how to Recover a SQL VM using a Hyper-V Host level backup? I always think the Recovery aspect is much more tricky than the backup.
Any in-depth articles about these type of scenarios would be much appreciated? We are not using guest level backups but we are using SQL backups within the VM.