Notes about instant recovery of a Hyper-V virtual machine

Last published : Apr 02, 2026
Review the following notes before configuring an instant recovery job.
  • Backup Exec Management Command Line Interface (BEMCLI) is not supported for instant recovery jobs.
  • Instant recovery of a virtual machine is not supported in a clustered Backup Exec environment.
  • Backup Exec does not support instant recovery of a virtual machine to a Hyper-V server that runs an older version than the Hyper-V server from which you backed up the virtual machine. For example, you cannot instantly recover a virtual machine to a Hyper-V 2008 server if the virtual machine was backed up from a Hyper-V 2012 server.
  • The following apply in a CAS environment:
    • The central administration server or the managed Backup Exec server can instantly recover a virtual machine that is running on the server itself. However, only the managed Backup Exec server can remove the instantly recovered virtual machine that was recovered on the server.
    • You cannot administer an instant recovery job from a central administration server after you delegate the job to a managed Backup Exec server.
  • In the following scenarios, Backup Exec stores disks in a different format than the disk format of the original virtual machine:
    • If the storage property of the disks that are attached to the original virtual machine was set to Fixed Size, Backup Exec converts the disk storage property to Dynamically Expanding during the backup process. When you create an instantly recovered virtual machine, the disk storage property is Dynamically Expanding.
    • Backup Exec converts the virtual machine disks from a VHDX format to a VHD format during the backup job while writing to the target device. The disks are converted if the virtual machine that is selected for the backup job runs Hyper-V Server 2012 or later and the Backup Exec server is installed on a Windows 2008 R2 or earlier server.
When you create an instantly recovered virtual machine, the disks are in a VHD format. To convert the disks back to the VHDX format, migrate the virtual machine from Backup Exec server storage and then use the Hyper-V manager to convert the disk to the VHDX format.
  • An instant recovery job does not preserve the saved state of the backup set that was used to create an instantly recovered virtual machine.
  • An instant recovery job does not preserve the user-created snapshots that are present in the backup set used to create an instantly recovered virtual machine.
  • Backup Exec supports instant recovery of a generation 2 virtual machine only if it was backed up on a Backup Exec server that was installed on Windows Server 2012 or later.