Hyper-V with WHS V2

[Matt897]

I have an older WHS that I soon will be upgrading to new hardware once WHS V2 is finally released stable. I plan on installing Server 2008 with Hyper-V and doing a VM for WHS. My question has to do with disaster recovery.
Lets say I have a 200 gig system drive along with several 2tb drives. Server 2008/WHS V2 is installed on the main drive and the storage space on the WHS would use directly connected hard drives aka no VM disks other than the WHS boot drive. If the system disk fails can I transfer the storage drives to different hardware - and expect to get the re-installation option even if i chose not to do a new VM aka - No time to go through the trouble I just need to make sure my stuff is safe?

Also to recover the base OS - What does everyone else use to backup the system drive? Other than WHS doing its own backup of the machine - being that it relies on the Base OS to run if that is non-operational I need an external mode of backup. I want something image based, easy, free, that gets the job done - with awesome reliability. I'm not a big fan of the built in server backup.

If the system disk fails and i'm recovering the base OS from an image - it should include the VM...so the WHS should operate just fine assuming the storage disks aren't touched?

Suggestions?

 

[nitrobass24]

I have an older WHS that I soon will be upgrading to new hardware once WHS V2 is finally released stable. I plan on installing Server 2008 with Hyper-V and doing a VM for WHS. My question has to do with disaster recovery.
Lets say I have a 200 gig system drive along with several 2tb drives. Server 2008/WHS V2 is installed on the main drive and the storage space on the WHS would use directly connected hard drives aka no VM disks other than the WHS boot drive. If the system disk fails can I transfer the storage drives to different hardware - and expect to get the re-installation option even if i chose not to do a new VM aka - No time to go through the trouble I just need to make sure my stuff is safe?

Yes, if you use passthrough disks it is no different than if you used them on the host system.

Also to recover the base OS - What does everyone else use to backup the system drive? Other than WHS doing its own backup of the machine - being that it relies on the Base OS to run if that is non-operational I need an external mode of backup. I want something image based, easy, free, that gets the job done - with awesome reliability. I'm not a big fan of the built in server backup.

Are you talking about imaging the Host's system disk or the Virtual HDD for the WHS OS?
Whats wrong with the built-in Server backup? You can set it to make an image of just the Base OS and not all the storage and have it saved somewhere else on your network. Thats what i do on my setup. Server 2008R2 w/ Hyper-v. I have had to restore and it was quite simple and free.

If the system disk fails and i'm recovering the base OS from an image - it should include the VM...so the WHS should operate just fine assuming the storage disks aren't touched?
Suggestions?

If the Host System disk fails and is backed up then yes it will be fine.