Exclude a vhd on a Guest VM?

[gvandehy]

I am just starting using BackupAssist on Hyper-V. For the most part I understand and have been successful with backups and test restores.

Currently, I have a Hyper-V host with two guest OSes. I recently introduced an additional vhd on one of the guests with a large [1.5TB], static capacity. The files/folders are for reference and not business critical and therefore I would like to exclude them from the backup. I have not found a way to do so.

I am running BA on the host using "system protection" to backup the host and the VMs using granular restore add-on.

I see I can uncheck the drive in question in BA on the host, but the vhd is still selected within the hyper-v guest. There doesn't appear to be a way to de-select it. I attempted an 'exclude' folder without success.

Without being able to deselect that drive, I am unable to complete a backup due to capacity.

I am running 8.44

Any advice is appreciated.

[Stuart]

Hi there,

It's Stuart here from the BackupAssist team, thanks for posting on the forum.

When selecting the Microsoft Hyper-V VSS option, this automatically selects the the volumes/files which the Hyper-V VSS writer requires to perform a consistent backup of the guest machines.

Any VHD which is attached to a guest machine will be viewed at as a critical file within VSS and it is required to back it up for a fully successful backup.

The only way I could think of getting around this is setting up a guest on a different volume to house the reference data as you'll then be able to exclude the guest from backup and in turn exclude the reference data you don't wish to back up.

We have the following guide may help as it outlines best practice guide which outlines how to configure Hyper-V so that you can exclude guests, etc. easily:
https://www.backupassist.com/education/ ... guide.html.

Hope this information helps.