As described in Recommended deployment for protecting a Hyper-V cluster|tag=Recommended deployment for protecting a Hyper-V cluster, we recommend installing the Hyper-V Agent Management service on a VM in the cluster, and installing the Host service on each host in the cluster.
If you do not want to deploy a VM in the cluster for the Management service, you can install the Management service directly on a Hyper-V host, or on any supported Windows server that has local network access to the cluster. The server can be a physical or virtual machine that is on the same domain as the Hyper-V cluster.
You must install the Hyper-V Agent Host service on at least one host in a protected cluster. You do not have to install the Host service on every host in a cluster, since a single Host service can back up VMs on all hosts. However, this configuration is not optimal, for the following reasons:
•If the Host service is installed on only one host, all backup operations are delegated to the single host. The load cannot be distributed.
•A VM that is stored on a local volume can only be backed up if the Host service installed on the host.
•A Hyper-V VM can only be restored to a host where the Host service is running. When restoring a Hyper-V VM in a cluster, you must choose a host where the Host service is running or the restore will fail.
Note: If the Host service is not installed on the host where you want to restore a VM, you can restore the VM to a host where the Host service is installed, and then migrate the VM to the host that you want for the VM.
For supported platform information, see the Hyper-V Agent release notes.
Note: You cannot install the Host service on a host where the Agent for Microsoft Windows is installed.