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Conditions When DPM Fails to Back up Hyper-V Virtual Machines in an Online State

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Applies To: System Center Data Protection Manager 2010

By default, DPM 2010 performs a backup of a Hyper-V Virtual Machine (VM) in an online state. However, DPM cannot back up a Hyper-V VM in an online state, if one or more of the following conditions are true:

  • Backup (Volume Snapshot) Integration Service is disabled or not installed.

  • VM has one or more dynamic disks.

  • VM has one or more non-NTFS based volumes.

  • The VM Cluster Resource Group in a cluster setup is offline.

  • VM is not in a running state.

  • A ShadowStorage assignment of a volume inside the VM is explicitly set to a different volume other than itself.

These conditions are set by the Hyper-V writer. In such a case, the VM is put in a saved state before a snapshot of host volumes are taken (except when the VM is turned off) for a backup. The Hyper-V writer adds the VM in the following format:

  • For offline backups: Backup Using Saved State\<VMName>

  • For online backups: Backup Using Child Partition Snapshot\<VMName>

Note

During offline/online backups, the name of the data source remains unchanged even if the VM configuration changes to support online backups or for any further backups.