Consider the following as you plan for disaster recovery of your Hyper-V virtual machines.
Unitrends software considerations and requirements
• The Unitrends appliance must be running release 8.0 or higher.
• Unitrends Windows agent release 8.0 or higher must be installed on the Hyper-V server hosting the VMs and on the Hyper-V server used as the restore target.
• After installing the 8.0 agent on the Hyper-V server hosting your VMs, it is recommended that you reload the list of VMs in the Unitrends backup window. (Select the Hyper-V application in the Navigation pane, click Backup, then click the reload icon in the lower right corner of the VMs to Protect list.)
• Backups taken with a pre-8.0 agent can be used as long as agent release 8.0 or higher has been installed on the server hosting the VMs. This agent is required for the appliance to retrieve generation information for the VMs.
Hyper-V and Windows Server considerations and requirements
• The restore target must be:
- Windows Server 2012 or higher with the Hyper-V role enabled
- Hyper-V Server 2012 or higher
Note: Backups from older versions of Hyper-V can be used for Hyper-V instant recovery as long as the target server is 2012 or higher, and the Unitrends appliance and Windows agent on the Hyper-V host are running version 8.0 or higher.
• For the restore target, you must use a Hyper-V server that is the same version or higher, as the Hyper-V server hosting the original virtual machine. It is recommended that you restore to a Hyper-V server whose version matches that of the original, where possible.
• You can perform instant recovery using local or replicated backups. The restore target can be the original Hyper-V server or an alternate Hyper-V server. The target server must be registered to the Unitrends appliance from which you are performing the instant recovery.
General virtual machine considerations and requirements
• All disks created on the Hyper-V virtual machine must have unique names.
• Since Unitrends does not create clones, the restored virtual machine is configured with the latest hardware version that is supported by the target Hyper-V server.
• For Generation 2 virtual machines, the restore target must be Windows/Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 or higher.
• Disks excluded during backup, including independent and physical RDM disks, are not restored with instant recovery for Hyper-V.
• Hyper-V Instant Recovery is not supported for Host component (AzMan Security Database for Hyper-V) backups of the original virtual machine. These are not bootable backups.
Clustered virtual machine considerations and requirements
• Hyper-V instant recovery supports clustered and non-clustered virtual machines.
• The target Hyper-V server determines the cluster status of the new virtual machine. To create a clustered VM for instant recovery, you must select a cluster as the target Hyper-V server. If you select an individual member node, the resulting VM is not clustered.
• When creating a clustered VM for instant recovery, you must select the network switch common to all nodes in the cluster. If you do not select this switch, the new VM will lose network connectivity if it fails over to another cluster node.