Hyper-V backup implementation guide

Planning your Hyper-V backup solution is important to ensure that backups and restores of Hyper-V hosts and guests work as intended. This document provides information and helpful hints so that you have a best practice solution that meets your expectations.

The Hyper-V backup implementation guide is a PDF that can be selected from the PDF link at the top of this page.

The guide includes information on the following areas:

  • Hyper-V backup considerations
  • Important points that should be considered when planning Hyper-V backups.

  • Hyper-V best practice
  • Implementing a Hyper-V backup solution means aligning what you are backing up, how you are backing it up and your backup destination. This section provides best practice suggestions for a Hyper-V backup implementation, using BackupAssist.

    This section includes information about:

    • Best practice for hosts
    • Best practice for guests
    • Best practices for storing host data
    • Selecting the best backup type
    • Best practice backup scenarios

  • System Protection backups
  • System Protection backups are recommended for most Hyper-V servers because they can use the Hyper-V Granular Restore tool and Data containers, and they can be used in a recovery. This section contains some important considerations when using System Protection to back up a Hyper-V environment.

  • Hyper-V Granular Restore tips
  • BackupAssist v9 and later uses the Integrated Restore Console, which seamlessly restores granular guest data. BackupAssist v8 and earlier use the Hyper-V Granular Restore Console to restore guest data. This guides includes tips for using the older Hyper-V Granular Restore Console.

  • Advanced topics and technologies
  • This section provides advice for the folowing technologies:

    • Failover & Cluster Volumes
    • Offsite backups
    • Hyper-V snapshots
    • SMB 3

  • Troubleshooting Hyper-V backups
  • This section contains information and troubleshooting steps for specific Hyper-V problems.


For detailed instructions on how to use BackupAssist to create backup jobs and perform restores , please refer to our Hyper-V Protection guide.