DPM 2012 R2 only allows offline backups of VM with updated integration tools

All DPM admins that backup Hyper-V VMs have seen the dreaded offline backup state before. Admins of earlier versions of DPM might know this as "Saved State", either way its annoying and disruptive to backup VMs in an offline/saved state.

Recently when we did a migration of VMs from one Hyper-V cluster to another with SCVMM, we came across an issue where most of the VMs appeared as "Offline backup" in the DPM console.

This can be caused by a multitude of issues, including not having a SCSI adapter connected to the VM and running an old version of the integration tools.

However after checking all the requirements (listed below), we were still only able to capture offline backups on some VMs.

• The Backup (Volume Snapshot) Integration Service is disabled or not installed.
• A virtual machine has one or more dynamic disks.
• A virtual machine has one or more volumes that are based on non-NTFS file systems.
• In a cluster configuration, the virtual machine Cluster Resource Group is offline.
• A virtual machine is not in a running state.
• A Shadow Storage assignment of a volume inside the virtual machine is explicitly set to a different volume other than itself.

In testing we removed a VHD from a VM that had multiple VHD connected and then tested it, this worked! Funnily enough, when we re-added the VHD, the VM still could be backed up online. This led us to a fix that worked on most of our problematic VMs.

The Resolution

1. Open up Hyper-V or SCVMM.

2. Go into the hard drive settings of the problematic VM and remove all VHD (not delete, just remove for now - do I even need to say that?).

3. Save the VM.

4. Re-add the VHD and save the VM again.

5. Start the VM

6. Attempt to backup with DPM again, you may need to clear the state cache in DPM

Essentially we are doing nothing, removing and re-adding a configuration. However this seems to resolve the issue on most VM. This may or may not be similar in your environment, as these VM had all been migrated between Hyper-V servers with VMM.