Hyper-V VM Backup

Breeze can discover, back up, and restore Hyper-V virtual machines directly from the Backup dashboard. Every backup is a full Export-VM of the VM, in either application-consistent or crash-consistent mode — there is no incremental backup and no use of Resilient Change Tracking (RCT).

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Discovering VMs

Before you can back up VMs, Breeze needs to discover what’s running on your Hyper-V hosts.

1. Go to Backup > Device Backup > Hyper-V.
2. Click Discover VMs for the host device you want to scan.
3. Breeze queries the Hyper-V host and populates the VM list.

Caution

Discovery is not automatic. A profile protects every VM on an assigned host, but only against the discovered inventory — scheduled runs don’t query the host themselves. Run Discover VMs again after creating a new VM, or it won’t be backed up until you do.

The VM list shows:

Column	Description
VM name	The virtual machine’s display name
State	Running (green), Off (gray), Paused/Saved (yellow)
CPU count	Number of virtual processors assigned
Memory	Allocated memory in MB
VHD count	Number of virtual hard disks

Use the search box and state filter to find specific VMs. There’s no VM pick-list for backup — a profile protects everything discovered on its assigned hosts minus whatever you exclude (see Scheduled Backup below).

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Backing Up a VM

Manual Backup

1. On the Hyper-V tab, find the VM you want to back up.
2. Click the Backup button on the VM row.
3. Select the consistency type:
   • Application-consistent (default) — uses Hyper-V’s own VSS integration. Because the running VM’s memory state is captured as part of the export, a VM restored from an application-consistent backup comes back in Saved state, not Off.
   • Crash-consistent — for a running VM, the agent saves it (Save-VM), exports it, then resumes it (Start-VM), minimizing how long the source VM is paused. A VM that is Off or Saved is already consistent on disk, so it is exported as-is and left in that state. A Paused VM is saved and exported, then left Saved rather than resumed, so the guest doesn’t run without you; the job records a warning. A VM in a transitional state (starting, stopping, saving, …) or a critical state is refused; retry once it settles.
4. Confirm to start the export.

The backup job appears in the Recent Jobs feed on the Overview tab.

No export destination path

There’s no field to choose where the export goes. Breeze stages it on the Hyper-V host’s system drive, under the Windows system temp folder, before uploading — so a VM export needs free space on the system drive roughly equal to the VM’s size. A configurable path and cleanup of the staging directory are tracked in issue #5460.

Scheduled Backup

To back up VMs automatically, create a backup policy with the Hyper-V mode. By default, every VM on an assigned host is included; there’s no VM pick-list. Add VMs to the policy’s exclude list to skip specific ones (e.g., test or development VMs).

Note

Hyper-V mode uses all-by-default targeting, but it’s all-by-default against the discovered inventory, not a live scan of the host — see the discovery note above. A VM created after the last discovery scan isn’t protected by a scheduled run until you discover it.

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Viewing Checkpoints

Expand a VM row to see its checkpoint (snapshot) tree. Each checkpoint shows its name and creation timestamp, arranged in a hierarchy that reflects the checkpoint chain.

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Restoring a VM

1. On the Hyper-V tab, find the VM and click Restore.
2. The restore dialog walks you through:
   • Select snapshot — choose which backup snapshot to restore from
   • Target host — pick the Hyper-V host to import the VM onto (can be a different host)
   • VM name and ID — keep the original name or rename. Toggle whether to generate a new VM ID (on by default).
3. Review the settings and confirm.

The restore runs in the background. Starting it queues the import on the host and returns straight away; follow its progress and final result like any other restore job — see Monitoring a Restore. Before v0.117.0 a Hyper-V restore that ran longer than 10 minutes was reported as failed even though the host was still importing.

The restore does an Import-VM -Copy into the target host’s default virtual machine and virtual hard disk paths — there’s no option to import somewhere else today. Budget roughly twice the VM’s size in free space on the host’s system drive: the export is downloaded, then copied into place. The imported VM comes back in whatever state its backup captured — Saved for an application-consistent backup, Off for a crash-consistent one — start it manually when you’re ready.

From v0.118.0 (with the 0.118 agent), the restore refuses a VM name that already exists on the target host. Rename the VM in the restore dialog, or remove the existing VM first.

Restore as New VM

You can also restore a backup snapshot as a new VM from the Restore Wizard. This lets you adjust hardware specs (CPU count, memory, disk size) and select a virtual switch before creating the VM.

From v0.118.0 (with the 0.118 agent), a restore as new VM that cannot place every file fails before any VM is created. Earlier releases could report it as completed.

A restore as new VM copies the snapshot’s files onto the new disk and leaves the restored Windows installation as it was: no drivers are added to it on the Hyper-V host. The VM is Generation 2, which needs a Windows 8 / Windows Server 2012 or later guest, and those already include the Hyper-V storage and network drivers. Install any other drivers from inside the running VM.

Instant Boot

For fast recovery validation, use Instant Boot to boot a VM directly from a snapshot without fully restoring it. This lets you verify that the backup is usable without waiting for a full import. Instant boot status is tracked on the Hyper-V tab.

From v0.118.0 (with the 0.118 agent), the background sync runs inside the instant-boot command and must finish within the command’s run time. If it does not finish in time, the VM keeps running, is reported as degraded, and the partial staging data is removed.

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VM Power State Control

From the Hyper-V tab you can manage VM power state — start, stop, save, or pause VMs on managed hosts. This is useful for pre-backup preparation or post-restore validation.