Back up virtual machines on a Hyper-V system

You can use the backup-archive client to backup virtual machines that are managed by a Microsoft Hyper-V server.

Important: The following information applies only to Hyper-V backup and restore operations for Tivoli® Storage Manager configurations that do not have a license file for the Tivoli Storage Manager for Virtual Environments: Data Protection for Microsoft Hyper-V product installed. If you have that license installed, use the Hyper-V protection procedures that are documented in the Tivoli Storage Manager for Virtual Environments: Data Protection for Microsoft Hyper-V Installation and User's Guide.

The Tivoli Storage Manager backup-archive client can be used to perform the following tasks on Hyper-V systems:

Back up and restore snapshots of Hyper-V virtual machines by using the Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS) interface. You can restore a virtual machine from these files, which are created by VSS.
Restore either individual virtual machines or a group of virtual machines that are running on a Hyper-V server.
Back up data without stopping the virtual machine or stopping any running applications within the virtual machine.
Restriction: You can back up data this way only if the operating system of the virtual machine supports VSS. For more information about this restriction, see the Microsoft support article at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd252619(WS.10).aspx.
Add backup and restore support for guest operating systems without installing a Tivoli Storage Manager client on the guest VM.
Back up and restore any guest operating systems that are hosted by the Hyper-V server on remote shares, regardless of whether the guest operating system is supported by Tivoli Storage Manager.

For both disaster recovery and long-term data backup support, perform the following steps:

Install the Tivoli Storage Manager client on the physical Hyper-V host server in the parent partition. The server must use Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2012, or newer operating system.
On the Tivoli Storage Manager server, define a single node for the Hyper-V system.
Back up a running virtual machine from the backup-archive client GUI or from the command line:
- From the Tivoli Storage Manager GUI Backup window, expand the Hyper-V VMs container, and select the virtual machine to back up.
- You can also enter dsmc backup vm -vmlist=vm1 -vmbackuptype=HyperVFull at a Tivoli Storage Manager command prompt, where vm1 is the name of the virtual machine.
Important:
1. If the virtual machine is not fully VSS-compliant (the operating system supports VSS, and all virtual hard disks (VHD) are configured to support VSS):
  - The virtual machine that is running pauses
  - A snapshot is taken
  - The virtual machine resumes
Restore a virtual machine:
- From the Tivoli Storage Manager GUI Restore window, expand the Hyper-V VMs container, and select the virtual machine to restore.
- You can also enter: dsmc restore vm1 -vmlist=vm1 - vmbackuptype=HyperVFull at a Tivoli Storage Manager command prompt, where vm1 is the name of the virtual machine.
Important: When you restore a virtual machine, the existing virtual machine is stopped, and all files that comprise the existing virtual machine (for example, VHD files) are deleted. If the virtual machine is a member of a Windows Server 2012 (or newer version) cluster, the virtual machine is taken offline from the cluster, which stops the virtual machine. Then, the files are deleted and the virtual machine is restored from the Tivoli Storage Manager backup. When the backup snapshot is restored, the virtual machine is re-created, including any Hyper-V snapshots that existed when the files were backed up.

To schedule backups of Hyper-V virtual machines, create a schedule on the server to run the backups. When you define the schedule, specify ACTION=BACKUP, SUBACTION=VM, and add the -VMBACKUPTYPE=HYPERVFULL option to the OPTIONS parameter. The following shows a sample schedule definition for backing up Hyper-V virtual machines:

define sched standard HyperV-Backup type=client description="backup hyperv vms" 
  action=backup subaction=vm options="-vmbackuptype=hypervfull"

On the client system, add the virtual machines to be processed, when the scheduled backup is run, to the VMLIST option in the dsm.opt file. For example,

VMLIST VM1,VM2,VM99