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Backing up VM Host and VMs

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I have just installed version 12.5 on a Windows Server 2012R2 box.  This machine has a base install of Windows and then 3 VMs running.  My original backup plan was to backup the entire machine as well as the entire machine for the VMs.  However, I discovered that I was backing up the VMs twice.

I would like to backup only the Base OS on the Host and then the entire VM (x3).  I contacted technical support and then had me create two separate backup jobs.  One as files/folders and then second as entire machine.  The first job is set to backup just the OS and protected storage of the host.  The second job backs up all three VMs in their entirety.

Please note that I have both jobs set as a full backup to tape every night.  I have the tape drive speed and size on tape to hold all data on a single tape, so there is no need for any incremental backups at any time.

My problem is this.  I need both backups to run in succession and to backup to the same tape.  I need the tapes to be overwritten by the backup that runs first, but the second backup cannot overwrite the backup created earlier that night.  What settings do I need in order to accomplish the above.

If I choose to run a full backup on the host machine, am I able to exclude the drives that contain the other VMs (they are each on their on partition and ultimately have their own drive letter)?

Thanks in advance for any advice you can provide.

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Hi,

Assuming that your tape is connected directly to the host (where Hyper-V runs with its VMs), you can enable the  "Overwrite a tape in the stand-alone tape drive when creating a full backup" option (shown on screen shot below) in one of the backup plans - the one which is scheduled to start first. Also this plan should be creating always full backups. The 2nd plan should have this option left disabled and the type of backup scheme (schedule) for this plan can be any, since when it comes to 2nd plan the tape will already be overwritten and contain only 1 full backup from the 1st plan.

The type of backup plan (which starts first), e.g. whether it will back up host itself or hosted VMs, doesn't matter - you can do it in either order. Note that the plans execution schedule should not overlap, so you'll need to estimate how long each backup plan takes to complete and set up schedule for the other plan accordingly.

Also for host-level backup you can set up "Files filters" options to exclude folders which contain VM files from this backup, and thus avoid double space consumption. Alternatively you can exclude entire disks/volumes by using inclusion rules: set "What to backup" not to "Entire machine", but to "Disks/volumes".

P.S. In future updates we're planning to enable single-pass backup for Hyper-V hosts (internal feature ID: ABR-80546) in order to enable both host-level and VM-level recoveries from the same backup.

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Thank you.