Use Hardware Snapshot for Hyper-V Agentless Backup

Important! Hyper-V Agentless Backup uses Hardware snapshot only when all the disks of VM are on Hardware snapshot compatible volumes. Otherwise, backup uses software snapshot.

Follow these steps:

1. Verify if the following prerequisites are met.
• Install a VSS hardware provider (for example, NetApp) on the Hyper-V servers. To support the transportable snapshot, install the VSS hardware provider on the backup proxy server. A typical configuration of a VSS hardware provider includes:
• Specifying a server that controls the LUN
• Specifying the disk array credentials to access the disk array
• Note: For more information on configuring the VSS hardware provider, contact your hardware provider vendor.
• The Hyper-V server and the proxy server must have a similar operating system version.
• If the Hyper-V server belongs to a cluster, the proxy server should not be a part of the Hyper-V cluster.
2. Log in to the Console and create a plan for backup.
3. Note: For more information on creating an agentless backup plan, see How to Create a Host-based Agentless Backup Plan.
3. Verify that you have selected the Use hardware snapshot wherever possible option in the Advanced tab.
4. Note: To run backup only from hardware snapshot (not software snapshot), Arcserve UDP provides the following registry key: FallbackToSWSnapshot =0(dword)
5. You can apply this registry key for a specific node as well as all nodes.
• To apply for a specific node create the registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Arcserve\Unified Data Protection\Engine\AFBackupDll\(Nodeid)

Note: The (Nodeid) is created only after one backup.

• To apply for all nodes create the registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Arcserve\Unified Data Protection\Engine\AFBackupDll

Important! If "AFBackupDll" sub-key is not available, then you need to manually add sub-key AFBackupDll under engine as Engine\AFBackupDll\ and then add DWORD FallbackToSWSnapshot under AFBackupDll.

4. Save the plan and Submit the backup job.

The backup job runs using the storage snapshot.