Backing up Hyper-V host

[pkacz]

We have (mostly) Hyper-V environment where we have a Hyper-V host server at each location and that server hosts one or two guest VM Windows servers. We normally backup only the guest VMs but I am wondering if we are supposed to also backup each Hyper-V host. Is there a point in backing it up if all data is stored in VMs. What are the best practices and what most companies do in this case? Does backing up the host consume additional Veeam license instance if a guest VM backup already used one instance?

[david.domask]

Hi Pkacz, welcome to the forums.

Typically no need to backup the Hyper-V host itself, and doing so may cause issues with backups and other operations as well. Keep in mind, Microsoft doesn't really want you installing anything in the parent partition of the Hyper-V host. (Think backup workload + VSS freeze, can potentially introduce a lot of issues for both the backup and normal virtualization activities)

Backing up the host will itself require an instance just like any other workload.