Duplicati - Hyper-V Machines

Support
1

Hello,

When you choose to click in this option. (HyperV-Machines)
Is it only backupping the .VHD/.VHDX file, or the .VHD/.VHDX file + the “real” virtual machine files? (Smart Paging files etc)

Thanks,
Sincerely Ludvig

2

Hello and welcome to the forum!

I have never used Duplicati to try and protect Hyper-V VMs, but your message prompted me to give it a try. I created a single VM and then told Duplicati to back it up. I can confirm that Duplicati backed up the VHD(X) file and also the VMCX file. And since I tested backing up a running VM, it also seemed to back up the VMRS file.

I then deleted the VM including its virtual hard disk, then told Duplicati to do a restore. After the restore, I checked Hyper-V Manager and the VM was automatically re-registered. The VM started ok but because it was in a running state at the time of backup, it said it didn’t shut down properly. I believe this is to be expected - backing up a running VM only gets you a crash-consistent backup.

Anyway you should do some testing on your own to make sure it does what you want, but my limited testing looked good.

1 Like
3

Hi @drwtsn32.
Thanks for your reply.

So you mean that backups done when the Virtual Machine is running is not working?
This error:
”this machine didn’t shut down properly”
Do you get it all the time or just the first time you start the machine again? Because often can you just use the Restart button and its working again.

Sincerely,
Ludvig

4

The VM worked after restoring, it just behaved as if it crashed. You can avoid it by shutting down the VM before backing up. I believe is normal behavior when doing crash-consistent backups of running VMs.

I do not know if Duplicati is capable of making application-consistent backups of running VMs.