Hyper-V servers 2012 and higher can host virtual machines with disk storage located on SMB 3.0 shares. Unitrends software releases 8.0 and higher can protect these VMs with Hyper-V backups. For details, see Prerequisites and considerations below. For earlier releases, you must install the appropriate agents on these VMs and protect them at the guest OS level. For more information, see Protecting Hyper-V virtual machines at the guest OS level.
• The Unitrends appliance software and Windows agent must be release 8.0 or higher.
• The File Server and the File Server VSS Agent Service roles must be installed on the server hosting the SMB shares. For instructions on installing these roles, see KB 1776.
• The Windows agent installed on the Hyper-V server must be granted read/write access to remote SMB 3.0 shares. For instructions on granting this access, see Granting the Windows agent read/write access to remote SMB 3.0 shares below.
• The Hyper-V server hosting the VMs and the server hosting the SMB shares must belong to the same Windows domain.
• The VM can contain one or more disks located on SMB 3.0 shares. All disks can reside on the same SMB 3.0 share or different shares hosted by one or more servers in the same domain. All servers participating in the VM backup must belong to the same domain.
• For disks located on remote SMB 3.0 shares, the Windows agent creates a VSS snapshot on the remote server and then exposes it to the Hyper-V server through the SMB share pathing. The agent then backs up the VM’s files from the remote snapshot location. When the backup completes, all VSS snapshots created for the backup are removed from the server hosting the SMB share.
The Windows agent installed on the Hyper-V server must be granted read/write access to remote SMB 3.0 shares. You can grant this access using one of the following methods:
• On the Hyper-V server, change the login account for the Unitrends Windows agent service “bpagent” to the domain administrator account. Using these credentials will provide all necessary access to the SMB shares. This is the most secure option for SMB access. Note, however, that file-level backups of the Hyper-V server may encounter files whose permissions do not allow domain administrator access. If successful file-level backups for the Hyper-V server cannot be created and SMB share security is less of an issue, then the method below is recommended.
• Run the agent as local system account on the Hyper-V server and grant it read/write permission for the SMB shares. For instructions, see KB 1777.