Backup Hyper-V Hypervisor bare metal host?

[pirx]

Hi,

I've used Veeam for a long time for vSphere environments. Now I've the requirement to backup a small "high secure" Hyper-V environment (3 hosts, local storage). I guess backing up the VM's is straight forward, but the requirement is to backup the Hyper-V hosts too (not my idea!), there are bare metal. This means I've to use Veeam Agent.

Does it make a difference if I backup a standard Windows server, compared to a Hyper-V Hypervisor? Any limitations, things to take care of?

[Natalia Lupacheva]

Hi,

This is generally not recommended.

It's however possible, checking with our QA team, seems we don't have some "list of potential issues".

Just to clarify - is it a mandatory requirement for you to back up the hosts?

Thanks!

[pirx]

Sadly yes. There seems not to be an automated way to set them up, so the requirement is to backup guest VM's as well as Hypervisor hosts.

[Natalia Lupacheva]

Hi @pirx,

Sorry for the late response, we've discussed your case with QA.
If you are working with standalone Hyper-V hosts, we wouldn't expect any issues with backing up such environment using the Agent.
The only point - we would recommend switching VMs off before backing them up if it's possible.
You won't have any critical issues if you don't switch them off, but you may face some (totally fixable ) issues.

Anyway, the standard and recommended way to back up virtual machines is using VBR.
So I would say you can back up such environment using the Agent but it's a good approach for a one-time backup.

If you are looking for something more complex, you can consider backing up the environment with the Agent and backing up the VMs with VBR.

Thanks!

[pirx]

@Natalia Lupacheva,

maybe I was not clear, it's absolutely planned to backup the VM's on the Hyper-V host with VBR as VM. But we have the requirement to backup the hypervisor hosts in addition. I've never felt the need to backup a ESXi host, but in this case we need to backup the Hyper-V host itself. So we can perform the VM backup with VBR, but need the agent for Hyper-V host itself. I just don't know how well a Hyper-V host backup/recovery is working...

[Natalia Lupacheva]

Hi Ralf,

Ok, now I got it, thank you for the explanation.
Well, we do not expect issues with backing up standalone Hyper-V hosts with the agent. So, if it's a requirement...

I want to highlight we are talking about standalone Hyper-V hosts, not the cluster here.
The situation can be more complicated for a cluster.

Thanks!

[MichaelSander]

Hi Veeam Forum,

I am starting with Veeam 12 Community Edtiton in my lab. I added my Hyper-V host and created a backup job for backup my VMs.

I like also to backup the Hyper-V host as well. I am unsure how to do it. Maybe there are hundreds of documents, who describe that, I am sorry but I searched a lot. When I missed something please just write me the link, I am sorry. Even ChatGPT was not a good help.

• Should I create a "Windows computer" job and if so, how do I exclude the vDisks from the VMs? At "Backuping Mode" I am not sure which option I should select to get a full image for bare metal recovery of my physical Hyper-V host, without the VMs?

• Is there any need for Guest Processing?

• Another idea was to click on the host and select "Add to backup job", the host was automaticly added to the list of VMs, but I am not sure if that backup the host itself or just the VMs. But if that not backup the host, why the host is added as default to the list of VMs? In my normal jobs, I removed the host and added VM by VM.

Thanks for help
Michael

PS: Can I backup the VM with Veeam from my VM backup job as well?

[doktornotor]

This works just fine using the agent if you design it to make some sense. I.e., ONLY back up the Hyper-V host's system (not the data volume(s) where the VMs are located and which are backed up by VBR separately). I.e., backup mode = volume level, objects = OS volume. (Will back up EFI/Recovery as well.)

If you have those VMs on C:\ then do yourself a favour and move them to a separate partition.