Paragon HDD Manager 14 Hyper-V Preview

Paragon Software Group announced the launch of free Paragon HDD Manager 14 Hyper-V Preview for IT administrators of SMBs seeking a tool to handle IT management cycle, including protection of VMs hosted by Hyper-V.

The solution can operate at the virtualization layer, employing MS VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Service) to provide agentless backup and restore of any guest machine of Hyper-V. It does not require an agent on a target VM to create its point-in-time copy, including its configuration, OS, apps, etc. This approach enhances the backup performance, while minimizing the load on target machines and the hypervisor during the process. Besides, there is no need to provide credentials for every guest to do backups.

It protects VMs (online or offline) registered on a local Hyper-V host, where the product is installed. Guest machines can be backed up to pVHD (Paragon Virtual HDD), VMDK, VHD, or VHDX virtual containers. If using VHD or VHDX as the target backup format, the user can attach the resulting backup image to an existing VM of Hyper-V and the OS will be launched. If using pVHD, there will be available additional options, like high-level compression, encryption, or image splitting. Resulting virtual containers can be stored on a local disk (mounted/unmounted), a mapped network share, or by UNC path.

In case of a DR, it enables businesses to restore a previously backed up VM to a location according to a certain time stamp (if several are available). Users also are presented with the option to retrieve certain files from virtual containers through Connect VD and File Transfer Wizard.

To support external hosts with their guest machines, users are required to upgrade to Paragon Protect and Restore.

Features:

Operates at the virtualization layer, employing MS VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Service) to agentlessly protect Hyper-V guests
Backups entire VMs (online/offline) hosted by Hyper-V (Windows, Linux, etc.)
Backups to virtual containers (pVHD, VMDK, VHD, VHDX)
Provides several backup destination: a local disk (mounted/unmounted), a mapped network share, or a UNC path
If using pVHD, additional options are available, like high-level compression, encryption, or image splitting
Restores a previously backed up VM to a new location according to a certain time stamp
Allows granular file-level recovery through File Transfer Wizard