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Checklist for troubleshooting

Causes and solutions as a regular checklist for Hyper-V backup problems:

 

  1. The Hyper-V guest “Integration Services” needs to be up-to-date. From Hyper-V 2008 R2 until Hyper-V 2012 R2 you can upgrade them using the Hyper-V manager for each single Hyper-V guest by clicking on "Action" -> "Insert Integration Services Setup Disk". Since Hyper-V 2016 you need to use Windows update feature to get the latest Hyper-V guest “Integration Services”. Overview of all versions: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/33631.hyper-v-integration-components-versions.aspx
  2. All Hyper-V guests need to have at least one SCSI controller attached, even not virtual disk file is added to this controller type. To add an SCSI controller, you need to shut down the Hyper-V guest and add them through the Hyper-V manager.
  3. Open the Hyper-V manager console and in the Hyper-V guest settings at the “Integration Services” tab, the option “Backup (volume snapshot)” must be enabled.
  4. Since Hyper-V 2016 there is a "Checkpoint" tab in the Hyper-V guest settings. Make sure that "Enable checkpoints" is also enabled. Ideal are "Production checkpoints" as default setting. "Use automatic checkpoints" should always be disabled.
  5. Check the configuration version of the virtual machines in the Hyper-V Manager overview on the "Configuration Version" tab. For Hyper-V 2016 and newer, at least version 8.0 should be used. To upgrade, perform the following steps: Shut down the virtual machine using Hyper-V Manager and then right-click these virtual machines and select "Upgrade configuration version". Start the virtual machine.
  6. The Windows Hyper-V guests should only contain FAT32/NTFS/ReFS formatted virtual hard disks. Additional check for unformatted or RAW partitions or any iSCSI or pass-through disks. They also not support for Hyper-V online backup.
  7. The free space on the Hyper-V host disks and the virtual guest machine disks needs to be at least 10 %.
  8. The Shadow Storage space size should be set at least to 5 % for Hyper-V host and virtual guest machine.
  9. Make sure that the guest virtual machine does not have shadow copy space set for one volume on another volume. The allocation of the shadow copy space must remain separate on each hard drive.
  10. Check that there are no dynamic Windows disks in any virtual machine in Windows Disk Management. Microsoft Hyper-V does not support these. Only basic disks are supported (this does not apply to VHD / VHDX dynamic disks on the Hyper-V host itself).
    11. The VSS provider service "Hyper-V Volume Shadow Copy Requester" must be running in the virtual machines.
  11. The location of the Hyper-V host checkpoint file should be on the same disk as the location of the virtual disks for the virtual machines.

 

If all points are checked but the problem still exists, there are still special cases and possible solutions in the next section.