Backing up and recovering a Hyper-V host

For disaster recovery purposes, you can perform a disk-level backup of the entire Hyper-V host. This will back up the operating system and all virtual machines that are stored on the host's local disks.

To back up the host, you need to install Agent for Windows on it. In Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008/2008 R2, we recommend installing Agent for Windows remotely. If Agent for Hyper-V is already installed on the host, no additional license will be taken by Agent for Windows.

Alternatively, you can back up the host by using a bootable media.

Usage examples

Example 1. Backing up a stand-alone host

Consider the following scenario:

• You want to back up a host whose virtual machines are stored locally, such as on local disks or on logical unit number (LUN) devices.
• You do not need to recover individual virtual machines from the backup.

In this scenario, install Agent for Windows, and then create and run a backup plan to back up the entire host.

Backup

When setting up a backup for a host, make sure that:

• You selected to use the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) backup option. In Snapshot provider, select Software - System provider. This ensures that the virtual machines are backed up in a consistent state.
• You installed Hyper-V Integration Services in the guest operating systems. This ensures that VSS does not put running virtual machines into a saved state (does not pause them) when taking the snapshot.

Recovery

Use the bootable media to recover the host to the same hardware, or to dissimilar hardware by using Universal Restore.

After recovering the host to the same hardware in the same configuration, you can resume working with the virtual machines right away.

After recovering the host to a machine with a different set or placement of network adapters, you need to reassign the virtual network adapters of the virtual machines to the physical adapters of the host.

Example 2. Backing up a cluster node before installing software updates

Consider the following scenario:

• You have a Hyper-V cluster with two or more nodes that use Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) for storing virtual machines.
• You want to regularly back up virtual machines of the cluster.
• You want to back up cluster nodes before installing software updates on them.

In this scenario, install both Agent for Hyper-V and Agent for Windows on each node of the cluster. Register the nodes on the management server.

Set up disk-level backups for both nodes, by creating a centralized backup plan. You can exclude virtual machines from the backup, by excluding the CSV where the machines are stored from the CSV owner backup. Volumes that correspond to CSV do not have letters, so you can easily recognize them.

Before installing the software updates, back up the nodes. Install the software updates on one node at a time. If installing the updates has caused problems with the operating system, turn off the node. The remaining nodes will take over the virtual machines that ran on the node. Use the bootable media to recover the node. Once the node is operational again, the virtual machines will migrate back to it.

To back up the virtual machines themselves, create a separate backup plan. For details, see "Backing up clustered Hyper-V machines".