About backing up and restoring Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines

Last published : Apr 02, 2026
To create a backup of a Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machine, you must back up the volumes of the computer where the virtual machine is hosted. Create either a live backup or a system state backup of the host machine. You cannot back up or restore a specific virtual machine. A live backup is created while the virtual machine is running (hot backup).
A system state backup is created in any of the following conditions:
  • The guest operating system on the virtual machine is not running (cold backup).
  • The Hyper-V VSS integration component is not installed in the virtual machine.
    Note: Arctera System Recovery is unable to back up cluster shared volumes. Because volumes in such a configuration are accessible to each of the clustered Hyper-V host computers, a given volume cannot be locked for backup . However, clustered disks can be backed up by Arctera System Recovery because one host has exclusive access to the disk.
To create a backup of a running virtual machine, the following conditions must be met:
  • The guest operating system must be running.
  • The guest computer must be running Windows Server 2012 or later.
If the guest computer is running Windows 2000, you can only create a system state backup (cold backup).
  • The Hyper-V VSS integration component must be installed on each virtual machine to be backed up.
If you move a virtual machine from Virtual Server 2005 to Hyper-V, first uninstall the Virtual Server 2005 integration component from the virtual machine. After you Virtual Server 2005 integration component, you can install the Hyper-V VSS integration component.
  • The guest virtual machine should be configured to only use basic disks, not dynamic disks.
This configuration is the default for installing a Windows virtual machine.
  • All the volumes on the fixed disks must support the creation of snapshots.
If you perform a backup when these conditions are not met, Arctera System Recovery creates a system state recovery point that is crash-consistent. A crash-consistent recovery point captures the virtual machine as if it had experienced a system failure or power outage.
You can restore a specific virtual machine from the recovery point of the host computer using the Recovery Point Browser. Use the Recovery Point Browser to extract the files that make up the virtual machine. The host computer recovery point must include the volume that holds the virtual machine that you want to restore.
To know about the limitations of Hyper-V when backing up databases on virtual machines, refer to the Arctera Knowledge Base:
https://www.veritas.com/content/support/en_US
Find information about backing up Microsoft virtual hard disks:
See About backing up Microsoft virtual hard disks.