Support matrix for disaster recovery of on-premises Hyper-V VMs to Azure

This article summarizes the supported components and settings for disaster recovery of on-premises Hyper-V VMs to Azure by using Azure Site Recovery.

Note

Site Recovery does not move or store customer data out of the target region, in which disaster recovery has been setup for the source machines. Customers may select a Recovery Services Vault from a different region if they so choose. The Recovery Services Vault contains metadata but no actual customer data.

Supported scenarios

Scenario Details
Hyper-V with Virtual Machine Manager

You can perform disaster recovery to Azure for VMs running on Hyper-V hosts that are managed in the System Center Virtual Machine Manager fabric.

You can deploy this scenario in the Azure portal or by using PowerShell.

When Hyper-V hosts are managed by Virtual Machine Manager, you also can perform disaster recovery to a secondary on-premises site. To learn more about this scenario, read this tutorial.
Hyper-V without Virtual Machine Manager You can perform disaster recovery to Azure for VMs running on Hyper-V hosts that aren't managed by Virtual Machine Manager.

You can deploy this scenario in the Azure portal or by using PowerShell.

Note

Configuring both Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery on the same Hyper-V host can cause issue with replication and is not supported.

On-premises servers

Server Requirements Details
Hyper-V (running without Virtual Machine Manager) Windows Server 2022, Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2012 R2 with latest updates

Note: Server core installations of these operating systems are also supported.
If you have already configured Windows Server 2012 R2 with/or SCVMM 2012 R2 with Azure Site Recovery and plan to upgrade the OS, please follow the guidance documentation.
Hyper-V (running with Virtual Machine Manager) Virtual Machine Manager 2022 (Server core not supported), Virtual Machine Manager 2019, Virtual Machine Manager 2016, Virtual Machine Manager 2012 R2

Note: Server core installations of these operating systems are also supported.
If Virtual Machine Manager is used, Windows Server 2019 hosts should be managed in Virtual Machine Manager 2019. Similarly, Windows Server 2016 hosts should be managed in Virtual Machine Manager 2016.

Note

Ensure that .NET Framework 4.6.2 or higher is present on the on-premises server.

Replicated VMs

The following table summarizes VM support. Site Recovery supports any workloads running on a supported operating system.

Component Details
VM configuration VMs that replicate to Azure must meet Azure requirements.
Guest operating system Any guest OS supported for Azure..

Windows Server 2016 Nano Server isn't supported.

VM/Disk management

Action Details
Resize disk on replicated Hyper-V VM Not supported. Disable replication, make the change, and then re-enable replication for the VM.
Add disk on replicated Hyper-V VM Not supported. Disable replication, make the change, and then re-enable replication for the VM.
Change disk ID on replication Hyper-V VM Not supported. If you change the disk ID, it impacts the replication and will show the disk as "Not Protected".

Hyper-V network configuration

Component Hyper-V with Virtual Machine Manager Hyper-V without Virtual Machine Manager
Host network: NIC Teaming Yes Yes
Host network: VLAN Yes Yes
Host network: IPv4 Yes Yes
Host network: IPv6 No No
Guest VM network: NIC Teaming No No
Guest VM network: IPv4 Yes Yes
Guest VM network: IPv6 No Yes
Guest VM network: Static IP (Windows) Yes Yes
Guest VM network: Static IP (Linux) No No
Guest VM network: Multi-NIC Yes Yes
Https Proxy No No
Automatic Private IP Addressing (APIPA) No No
Private link access to Site Recovery service Yes. Learn more. Yes. Learn more.

Azure VM network configuration (after failover)

Component Hyper-V with Virtual Machine Manager Hyper-V without Virtual Machine Manager
Azure ExpressRoute Yes Yes
ILB Yes Yes
ELB Yes Yes
Azure Traffic Manager Yes Yes
Multi-NIC Yes Yes
Reserved IP Yes Yes
IPv4 Yes Yes
Retain source IP address Yes Yes
Azure Virtual Network service endpoints
(without Azure Storage firewalls)
Yes Yes
Accelerated Networking No No

Hyper-V host storage

Storage Hyper-V with Virtual Machine Manager Hyper-V without Virtual Machine Manager
NFS NA NA
SMB 3.0 Yes Yes
SAN (ISCSI) Yes Yes
Multi-path (MPIO). Tested with:

Microsoft DSM, EMC PowerPath 5.7 SP4, EMC PowerPath DSM for CLARiiON
Yes Yes

Hyper-V VM guest storage

Storage Hyper-V with Virtual Machine Manager Hyper-V without Virtual Machine Manager
VMDK NA NA
VHD/VHDX Yes Yes
Generation 2 VM Yes Yes
EFI/UEFI

The migrated VM in Azure will be automatically converted to a BIOS boot VM. The VM should be running Windows Server 2012 and later only. The OS disk should have up to five partitions or fewer and the size of OS disk should be less than 2 TB.
Yes Yes
Shared cluster disk No No
Encrypted disk No No
NFS NA NA
SMB 3.0 No No
RDM NA NA
Disk >1 TB Yes, up to 32 TB

You will need to upgrade the replication provider on the Hyper-V host to any version after 2.0.9214.0 to replicate large disks up to 32 TB. For large disks, replication will happen to managed disks only.
Yes, up to 32 TB

You will need to upgrade the replication provider on the Hyper-V host to any version after 2.0.9214.0 to replicate large disks up to 32 TB. For large disks, replication will happen to managed disks only.
Disk: 4K logical and physical sector Not supported: Gen 1/Gen 2 Not supported: Gen 1/Gen 2
Disk: 4K logical and 512-bytes physical sector Yes Yes
Logical volume management (LVM). LVM is supported on data disks only. Azure provides only a single OS disk. Yes Yes
Volume with striped disk >1 TB Yes Yes
Storage Spaces No No
Hot add/remove disk No No
Exclude disk Yes Yes
Multi-path (MPIO) Yes Yes

Azure Storage

Component Hyper-V with Virtual Machine Manager Hyper-V without Virtual Machine Manager
Locally redundant storage Yes Yes
Geo-redundant storage Yes Yes
Read-access geo-redundant storage Yes Yes
Zone-redundant storage No No
Cool storage No No
Hot storage No No
Block blobs No No
Encryption at host No No
Encryption at rest (SSE) Yes Yes
Encryption at rest (CMK)

(Only for failover to managed disks)
Yes (via PowerShell Az 3.3.0 module onwards) Yes (via PowerShell Az 3.3.0 module onwards)
Double Encryption at rest

(Only for failover to managed disks)

Learn more on supported regions for Windows and Linux
Yes (via PowerShell Az 3.3.0 module onwards) Yes (via PowerShell Az 3.3.0 module onwards)
Premium storage Yes Yes
Standard storage Yes Yes
Import/Export service No No
Azure Storage accounts with firewall enabled Yes. For target storage and cache. Yes. For target storage and cache.
Modify storage account No. The target Azure Storage account can't be modified after enabling replication. To modify, disable and then re-enable disaster recovery. No
Secure transfer option Yes Yes
UEFI Secure boot No No

Note

Striped volumes and dynamic disks are not supported for app-consistent snapshots. Ensure that the frequency for app-consistent snapshot is set to zero in the selected replication policy.

Azure compute features

Feature Hyper-V with Virtual Machine Manager Hyper-V without Virtual Machine Manager
Availability sets Yes Yes
Availability zones No No
HUB Yes Yes
Managed disks Yes, for both failover and failback. Yes, both failover and failback.

Azure VM requirements

On-premises VMs that you replicate to Azure must meet the Azure VM requirements summarized in this table.

Component Requirements Details
Guest operating system Site Recovery supports all operating systems that are supported by Azure. Prerequisites check fails if unsupported.
Guest operating system architecture 32-bit (Windows Server 2008)/64-bit Prerequisites check fails if unsupported.
Operating system disk size Up to 2 TB for generation 1 VMs.

Up to 4 TB for generation 2 VMs.

You will need to upgrade the replication provider on the Hyper-V host to any version after 2.0.9214.0 to replicate large OS disks. For large disks, replication will happen to managed disks only.
Prerequisites check fails if unsupported.
Operating system disk count 1 Prerequisites check fails if unsupported.
Data disk count 16 or less Prerequisites check fails if unsupported.
Data disk VHD size Up to 32 TB

You will need to upgrade the replication provider on the Hyper-V host to any version after 2.0.9214.0 to replicate large disks. For large disks, replication will happen to managed disks only.
Prerequisites check fails if unsupported.
Network adapters Multiple adapters are supported
Shared VHD Not supported Prerequisites check fails if unsupported.
FC disk Not supported Prerequisites check fails if unsupported.
Hard disk format VHD

VHDX
Site Recovery automatically converts VHDX to VHD when you fail over to Azure. When you fail back to on-premises, the virtual machines continue to use the VHDX format.
BitLocker Not supported BitLocker must be disabled before you enable replication for a VM.
VM name Between 1 and 63 characters. Restricted to letters, numbers, and hyphens. The VM name must start and end with a letter or number. Update the value in the VM properties in Site Recovery.
VM type Generation 1

Generation 2--Windows
Generation 2 VMs with an OS disk type of basic (which includes one or two data volumes formatted as VHDX) and less than 2 TB of disk space are supported.

Linux Generation 2 VMs aren't supported. Learn more.

Recovery Services vault actions

Action Hyper-V with VMM Hyper-V without VMM
Move vault across resource groups

Within and across subscriptions
No No
Move storage, network, Azure VMs across resource groups

Within and across subscriptions
No No

Note

When replicating Hyper-VMs from on-premises to Azure, you can replicate to only one AD tenant from one specific environment - Hyper-V site or Hyper-V with VMM as applicable.

Provider and agent

To make sure your deployment is compatible with settings in this article, make sure you're running the latest provider and agent versions.

Name Description Details
Azure Site Recovery provider Coordinates communications between on-premises servers and Azure

Hyper-V with Virtual Machine Manager: Installed on Virtual Machine Manager servers

Hyper-V without Virtual Machine Manager: Installed on Hyper-V hosts
Latest features and fixes
Microsoft Azure Recovery Services agent Coordinates replication between Hyper-V VMs and Azure

Installed on on-premises Hyper-V servers (with or without Virtual Machine Manager)
Latest agent available from the portal

Next steps

Learn how to prepare Azure for disaster recovery of on-premises Hyper-V VMs.