PHD Virtual Backup and Exporter

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PHD Virtual Backup is a fantastic piece of software that I highly recommend. I’ve been running this backup solution in my xenapptraining lab since June 2011 and it has saved my ass many times. It also made it very easy for me to setup my new lab in Brasil – Citrix XenServer The Optimal Cheap Home Lab.

Since then the PHD Virtual team have added more features and better performance so in this post I’ll show you how to upgrade your PHD Virtual Appliance to the latest version and configure the new PHD Virtual Export feature. If you’re new to PHD Virtual Backup you can check out this video taken from our xenapptraining members area.

PHD Virtual Backup Upgrade :

First you’ll need to download the upgrade image and then run PHDVB_Install.exe to upgrade the PHD Virtual Backup Citrix XenCenter plugin to the latest version.

From the console browse to the PHD file to upgrade your appliance.

After the appliance has restarted you should navigate to the License Manager node and check that your license is working correctly.

PHD Virtual Backup Exporter :

The PHD Virtual Backup Exporter lets you export backup files from any existing backup storage for long term or off-site storage. You only need to install the PHD Exporter if you plan to export backups to another location.

From the Configuration node enable the share and setup an username and password.

For performance reasons, it’s recommended that you install PHD Exporter to a physical machine. Run PHDVB_Exporter_Install.exe and follow the instructions. After the setup is completed navigate to the configuration node and define the location to store exported backups and the PHD VBA backup storage.

Now create a exporter job and select the virtual machines you want to export offline.

You also have the possibility to add the job to Windows Task Scheduler.

The VM’s are exported in the Open Virtualization Format.

OVF files can easily be imported using VMware OVF tool or Citrix XenCenter.

Resource :

As you might see PHD Virtual Backup is a fantastic product, and I have’nt even covered the Replication feature that let’s you replicate your virtual machines to an HR site. Virtualization is an industry standard now, but you would be surprised by the numbers of customers running without a proper backup solution.

Yes you can use Windows Backup, Symantec Backup Exec and so on, but with PHD Virtual Backup you’ll restore VM’s or files in minutes instead of hours. This product is really seeing is believing so I would highly recommend them to provide a free Express license similar to Citrix’s Express products.

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Friday 30th of September 2022

4 thoughts on “PHD Virtual Backup and Exporter”

  1. Have you got any feedback on the speed of the product? A customer of ours has it installed, and backup speeds are painfully slow (eg 60 hours to backup 3.5TB of data, compared to around 18 hours for their previous Backup Exec solution). One PHD rep said that’s just the way it works and wasn’t interested in helping further which hasn’t filled me with confidence.

    Regards
    Dan

    Reply
    • PHD Virtual likes to put their support number on the home page like they actually have a support phone number. No one actually ever answers this phone number. I stopped using the product due to terrible support. If you pay for 4 hour response 24/7 they means they might send you an email saying we got your email, thanks. That counts as 4 hour response. If you email them on the weekend, since the phone never works, you often don’t even get a response at all until Monday. Its a joke.

      Reply
  2. Wow, not interested in helping! That’s bad rep for them. Anyway, is this at every backup or just the first one. Have not got any feedback on speed, but we’ve worked with less than 1TB at customers.

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