When Amanda Enterprise is configured and licensed for Hyper-V Virtual Machine backup, Amanda uses the Microsoft Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to back up the Hyper-V virtual machines.
To backup Hyper-V virtual machine, Zmanda Windows client will have to be installed on the Hyper-V hypervisor (Hyper-V core installation is also supported). You need a Hyper-V license for each Windows Hypervisor. The windows client installed on the hypervisor can backup virtual machines residing on the hypervisor.
Hyper-V virtual machine backups are always Full backups. Differential or Incremental backups are not supported.
The backups are performed using the Hyper-V VSS Writer.
Hyper-V uses one of two mechanisms to back up each Virtual Machine. The default backup mechanism is called the Saved State method, where the VM is put into a saved state during the processing of the snapshot event, snapshots are taken of the appropriate volumes, and the VM is returned to previous state as a part of post-snapshot event.
The other backup mechanism is called the Child VM Snapshot method, which uses the VSS writers inside the Hyper-V child virtual machine to participate in the backup. The Child VM is the virtual machine being backed up. For the Child VM Snapshot method to be used, following conditions must be met:
The backup mechanism is selected for each virtual machine (child VM) in Hyper-V management interface.
In ZMC Backup What page, you can select Hyper-V from the Applications drop down menu. The figure below shows the Hyper-V virtual machine configuration as a backup object in the Backup set.
Host Name is the IP address or the name of Windows Hyper-V hypervisor. Click Discover button to discover all the virtual machines on the hypervisor. Zmanda Windows Client must be installed on the hypervisor to discover virtual machines.
Data Source : Users may select individual virtual machines with the Hyper-V hypervisor backup. This will backup the virtual hard disk files (.vhd or .vhdx) as well as the snapshot files (.avhd or .avhdx) of the virtual machine(s) selected. The Initial Store file is also backed up. The InitialStore.xml file, which contains the Hyper-V Authorization Store is backed up.
Encryption and Compression : Select these options as desired. They are described in more detail here.
After clicking Add button, the backup object is added to the table as shown below. You can edit the entry by clicking on the table entry.
For all Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Sharepoint, and Hyper-V backups, the name of the new machine must exactly match the name of the old machine.
Hyper-V virtual machines can be restored to the original Hyper-V hypervisor. The Name of hypervisor has to match the name of machine from where backup was performed (even if it is a different physical machine).
The actual process of restoration is identical to all other applications.