Application-Specific Guidelines › Microsoft Hyper-V VSS Writer › Backing Up Initial Store Using Microsoft Hyper-V VSS Writer

Backing Up Initial Store Using Microsoft Hyper-V VSS Writer

Initial Store is a separate component for Hyper-V that is stored in the System drive by default. You cannot create a VSS snapshot for the system volume for export because this component does not belong to any specific VM machine and will not assign any mirror image LUN for the system volume to create a shadow copy by default. Therefore, you must back up the Initial Store component using a normal VSS backup.

If you need to back up a VM using the Hyper-V VSS writer, ensure you back up all of the volumes that contain the files for the VM using the Transportable snapshot option and back up the Initial Store component using the normal VSS backup option. For more information about Transportable VSS Backups, see Create Transportable VSS Backups. To select the components for your backup, see Perform Writer Backups.