What is included in Paragon Protect & Restore Hyper-V Starter Kit?

Agentless VM Backup – Protects Hyper-V guest machines without per-VM agents
Central Console – Manages all backup and restore tasks centrally
VM Replication – Creates ready-to-run replicas for fast disaster recovery
Deduplication & Archiving – Shrinks storage use through redundant block exclusion
Core Capacity – Backs up to pVHD, VMDK, VHD, VHDX containers
Important – Host-level agent backup requires the Premium edition.

What are the main benefits of Paragon Protect & Restore Hyper-V Starter Kit?

Paragon Protect & Restore Hyper-V Starter Kit is a per-socket backup and disaster-recovery solution for small Microsoft Hyper-V environments. It protects guest virtual machines agentlessly and manages every backup, replication, and restore job from a single console.

No Guest Agents – Avoids installing software inside every virtual machine
Fast Recovery – Spins up replica VMs after host failure
Lower Storage Cost – Deduplication reduces repeated blocks across backup jobs
Flexible Storage Targets – Saves images to local disks, shares, NAS, SAN
Whole-VM Protection – Captures OS, configuration, and apps in one image
Exchange Database Backup – Protects Microsoft Exchange email databases consistently

Data loss is expensive: How backups help you avoid outages
For more background on backup planning, read our guide:

What does Paragon Protect & Restore Hyper-V Starter Kit do?

It creates agentless backups of the guest virtual machines running on a local Microsoft Hyper-V host. The tool uses the Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service to capture each VM as a point-in-time image, including its operating system, configuration, and applications, without installing anything inside the guest. All backup, replication, and restore jobs are configured from one central management console. The Starter Kit is sized for two CPU sockets, which fits a single small Hyper-V host.

How does the Hyper-V Starter Kit differ from the Hyper-V Premium edition?

The standard Hyper-V Starter Kit protects guest virtual machines agentlessly, while the Hyper-V Premium edition adds agent-based protection of the Hyper-V host itself. If you only need to recover the VMs, the standard edition is enough; if you also need to capture the host operating system and its local configuration, choose Premium. Both editions share deduplication, archiving, VM replication, and the same central console. Both are licensed per CPU socket, and the Starter Kit covers two sockets.

What technical limitations should you check before choosing it?

The Hyper-V Starter Kit protects entire virtual machines registered on the local Hyper-V host, not individual files picked from inside a running guest at the policy level. Agent-based protection of the Hyper-V host operating system is reserved for the Premium edition, so the standard Starter Kit will not back up the host itself. Restores run at the whole-VM level, though you can attach a backup image to an existing Hyper-V machine afterward to pull out specific data. Confirm that your recovery plan only needs guest-VM protection before choosing this edition over Premium.

Which backup formats and storage targets does it support?

Guest VMs can be backed up to pVHD, VMDK, VHD, or VHDX virtual container formats. Using VHD or VHDX lets you attach the resulting image directly to an existing Hyper-V machine and boot it, while pVHD adds high compression, encryption, and image splitting. Backup images can be stored on local disks, mapped network shares or UNC paths, NAS, and SAN. This lets a single job keep a fast local copy and a second copy on shared storage.

What makes it useful in daily Hyper-V administration?

VM replication keeps ready-to-run copies of critical machines, so a failed VM can be brought back quickly instead of waiting for a full image restore. Deduplication strips out repeated data blocks, such as operating-system page files and zero blocks, which lowers the storage each backup job consumes. The central console shows the status of every protection policy, so one administrator can watch backups across the host without logging into each VM. This suits a small IT team running one Hyper-V host that wants recovery and monitoring in one place.

Frequently asked questions about Paragon Protect & Restore Hyper-V Starter Kit

Can I restore a Hyper-V backup to different hardware?

Yes. Paragon Protect & Restore includes hardware-independent restore, which recovers a backed-up system onto different hardware by injecting the required drivers. This matters when the original server fails and you need to bring a machine back on a replacement host.

Does it also protect VMware vSphere environments?

The Hyper-V Starter Kit itself targets Microsoft Hyper-V. Paragon Protect & Restore can be extended to VMware vSphere with its matching vSphere edition, and both can then be driven from the same central console. Add the vSphere edition only if you actually run VMware hosts alongside Hyper-V.