Add and schedule a Hyper-V backup job

After a Hyper-V environment is added in Portal, you can create a backup job that protects VMs in the cluster or standalone host. The backup job specifies virtual machines (VMs) to back up, specifies where to save the backup data, and includes schedules for running the backup job.

Beginning with version 8.84 of the Hyper-V Agent, you can create application-consistent backups of Microsoft SQL Server, Exchange, SharePoint and Active Directory on Windows VMs in Hyper-V environments. Application-consistent backups minimize the amount of work needed to restore applications from backups. You can also specify whether application transaction logs should be truncated during application-consistent backups.

Each VM in a Hyper-V environment can only be included in one backup job at a time. If a VM is already included in a backup job, you cannot add it to another job.

For best practices when creating and running backup jobs, see Best practices for backing up Hyper-V VMs. For best practices when seeding VM backups, see Best practices for seeding Hyper-V VM backups. To create Hyper-V backup jobs, see Add a Hyper-V backup job.

When you run a Hyper-V Agent backup job, each VM in the job is backed up as a separate job (task) on the vault, and is automatically assigned a unique task name. This differs from jobs created using traditional agents, where each backup job is associated with a single task on the vault. This Hyper-V Agent backup job design provides a number of benefits:

• VMs in a single job can be backed up concurrently.

• Backup processing for individual VMs can be distributed across multiple nodes in a Hyper-V cluster.

• The Hyper-V Agent is scalable in large Hyper V environments.

• A VM can be moved to another job without reseeding (if encryption credentials are the same in both jobs).

• A protected VM can be restored even if its backup job has been deleted, as long as the VM's backup has not been deleted from the vault.

• If a protected VM has been deleted from your environment, and is no longer associated with a backup job, you can still see the VM in Portal in the protected view, and restore the VM from the vault. After restoring the VM, you can add the VM to a new job with the same encryption password, and continue to back up the VM without reseeding.

To view the vault task name for each protected Hyper-V VM, see Determine the name of a VM’s task on the vault.

All Hyper-V backup data is protected using AES 256 encryption.