Migrating from VSS backups to RCT backups

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To take advantage of the resilient change tracking (RCT) backup feature in Data Protection for Microsoft Hyper-V version 8.1.2 or later, migrate your virtual machine (VM) backup operations from the Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to RCT.

Before you begin

  • Verify that the Hyper-V VM is at version 6.2 or later. You can determine the VM version in the Hyper-V Manager or by running the Get-VM cmdlet.
  • When you migrate your Hyper-V environment from Windows Server 2012 or 2012 R2 to Windows Server 2016, the VM version of the Hyper-V VMs is not updated automatically. You must update the VMs to the new version before they can be backed up by Data Protection for Microsoft Hyper-V.

    Ensure that you take the guest VM offline before you update the VM version of a VM. You can update the VM version in the Hyper-V Manager or with the Update-VMVersion cmdlet.

Procedure

To migrate VSS backups to RCT:

  1. Install and configure Data Protection for Microsoft Hyper-V version 8.2.2 on the Hyper-V host server on the Windows Server 2016 operating system.
  2. Run an incremental-forever full backup operation on your VMs.

    All Data Protection for Microsoft Hyper-V backup operations in the Windows Server 2016 or later environment use RCT backups.

Results

  • Because previous VSS backups do not have RCT change-tracking information, an incremental-forever full backup is created the first time you back up a VM with Data Protection for Microsoft Hyper-V version 8.2.2.
  • VSS backups are disabled after the initial backup of a VM with RCT.
  • With Data Protection for Microsoft Hyper-V version 8.2.2, you can still restore VMs that were backed up on Windows Server 2016 in version 8.1.0. Subsequent backups of VMs use RCT.