Backing up Windows 8 Client Hyper-V Machine(s)?

Question

I'm running at least one VM using Hyper-V in Windows 8 Pro, and I'd like to back it up while it's still running.

Windows Server 2012 handles this great with the built-in "Windows Server Backup" engine.

But I cannot find a way to accomplish this on Windows 8.

I found HyperVBackup, and open source app to backup HyperV, but it doesn't work on Windows 8.

Answer 1

Windows Server Backup, System Restore, Previous Versions, Windows Backup / Windows 7 File Recovery and most other backup technologies on windows use a service called Volume Shadow Copy (VSS) to perform backups.

And backup software using VSS will be able to snapshot then backup virtual machines just fine without shutting them off.

Why not use Windows Backup (included in Windows 8 Pro) to perform backups?

Answer 2

This is the PowerShell script I use to backup my Client VM's running on Windows 8 although I don't do them live. PowerShell is not my strongest suite and it makes some assumptions but I hope it's useful to get someone else started quickly

function SendMail([string]$Subject, [string]$Body)
{
    #SMTP Variables

    $EmailFrom = "[email protected]"
    $EmailTo = "[email protected]" 
    $SMTPServer = "smtp.gmail.com" 
    $SMTPClient = New-Object Net.Mail.SmtpClient($SmtpServer, 587) 
    $SMTPClient.EnableSsl = $true 
    $SMTPClient.Credentials = New-Object System.Net.NetworkCredential("Username", "Password"); 

    $SMTPClient.Send($EmailFrom, $EmailTo, $Subject, $Body)

}

function init()
{
    # Delete existing shares

    #Net Use * /delete /y

    $guid = [guid]::NewGuid()
    $vms = Get-VM        
}

try
{
    $guid = [guid]::NewGuid()
    $vms = Get-VM  

    $pass = cat C:\HVBackup\securestring.txt | ConvertTo-SecureString
    $mycred = New-Object -typename System.Management.Automation.PSCredential -ArgumentList "Username",$pass

    New-PSDrive -Name V -PSProvider FileSystem -Root "\\NAS\Hyper-V" -Persist -Credential $mycred

    $Subject = "Notification from Virtual Machine Backup" 
    $Body = "Starting Virtual Machine Backup." 

    SendMail($Subject,$Body)

    foreach ($vm in $vms)
    {
        if($vm.State -eq "Running") { Stop-VM $vm.VMName -Save -Force }
    }

    #Stop-VM * -Save -Force

    # Delete all the files older than 7 days

    $TargetFolder = “V:\Backups”
    foreach ($i in Get-ChildItem $TargetFolder -recurse)
    {
        if ($i.CreationTime -lt ($(Get-Date).AddDays(-7)))
        {
            Remove-Item $File.FullName -force
        }
    }

    # Export the virtual machines to directory

    Export-VM * V:\Backups\$guid\

    $Subject = "Notification from Virtual Machine Backup" 
    $Body = "Finished Virtual Machine Backup." 

    SendMail($Subject,$Body)

    exit 0

}
catch [System.Exception]
{
    $Subject = "Notification from Virtual Machine Backup" 
    $Body = "There has been an error whilst running virtual machine backup." + $_.Exception.Message

    Write-Host($_.Exception.Message)

    SendMail($Subject,$Body)

    exit 1
}
finally
{

    Remove-PSDrive V

    $vms = Get-VM

    foreach ($vm in $vms)
    {
        if($vm.State -eq "Saved") { Start-VM $vm.VMName }
    }

    # Start the domain controller virtual machine

    #Start-VM dc.applicita.local
}

Here's the script that I use to generate the password file.

read-host -assecurestring | ConvertFrom-SecureString | out-file C:\HVBackup\securestring.txt

Answer 3

I know this is an old question. I found it when searching for a solution to how to back up a hyper-v machine running on Windows 10. I believe the situation is the same in Windows 10 as it was with Windows 8. So hopefully the following will be useful to anyone else facing this problem.

The bottom line is that without using third party tools you cannot backup a hyper-v machine running on Windows 8/10. The wbadmin command that allows you to backup hyper-v machines on Windows server doesn't support backups of hyper-v machines on Windows 8/10.

However, whilst you can't backup, you can export. An export is almost as good as a backup, possibly the most significant difference is that the virtual machine won't know that it has been "backed up", so for example sql server won't know that a backup has been run which may have implications for when logs are truncated.

You can either use the Hyper-V manager GUI to do the export or if you want to do it from the command line (which you probably will if you want it run by the task scheduler) then the powershell cmdlet is:

Export-VM -Name 'VM-Name' -PATH 'C:\Export-Path'

if you want to run this from a .cmd/.bat file then it becomes:

powershell -NonInteractive -Command "Export-VM -Name 'VM-Name' -PATH 'C:\Export-Path'"

Be aware that if you are exporting to a network share then the COMPUTER running Hyper-V will need to be granted access to the network share.