You are here: Host-level Backups Overview > Hyper-V virtual machines > Selecting Hyper-V VMs to protect

Selecting Hyper-V VMs to protect

Review these guidelines and tips before executing Hyper-V backups.

A separate backup is created for each VM you select.
A virtual machine may be included in only one schedule. If you attempt to add a VM to a second schedule, you cannot save that schedule. Remove the VM from the first schedule before adding it to another.
Hover over the virtual machine name to see whether Integration Services are enabled on the VM. A message displays if they are not enabled. If they are enabled, hovering over the VM displays the VM name. (For VMs in a cluster setup, this may take a few minutes.) If Integration Services are not enabled, the VM is put in a saved state during the backup. See General Hyper-V requirements for more information.
For VMs hosted on Windows Server versions later than 2008 R2, backups are executed simultaneously. The number of jobs that run simultaneously varies by the resource load of the system, and Monitor the resource utilization on the Hyper-V server to determine whether its backups should be staggered.

The following apply to Hyper-V clusters only:

Clustered VMs display when you select their host node. However, to protect them, you must select the cluster itself (DocCluster). You cannot protect these VMs by selecting the owner node.
Non-clustered VMs hosted on a cluster node do not display when you select the cluster (DocCluster). To protect these VMs, you must select the host node.
To protect virtual machines hosted on a cluster node but that do not reside on CSVs, you must create a backup schedule for the node that hosts the VMs. You cannot protect them in the same schedule as the clustered VMs.
If multiple virtual machines in a clustered environment (CSV) are running on Windows Server 2008 R2, the system serializes the backups. Jobs are queued but run one at a time. This is a Windows limitation.