Saved State Backup on Server 2012 R2 and DPM 2012

Question

Hello, Our environment in currently in transition with planned migration to 2012 R2. In the mean time, we have a 5 node 2008 R2 hyper-v cluster with CSV.  We are currently using DPM 2012 for our backup.  I have read multiple postings about child
partition backup and saved state and all that seems to make relative sense.
What I have noticed is that in our existing environment (2008 R2 Hyper-v, DPM 2012) that all 2012 R2 Virtual servers setup in our hyper-v cluster show 'Backup Using Saved State'.  All virtual 2003 - 2008 R2 servers on the same cluster show as 'Backup
using Child Partition Snapshot'.
So, the question: is this normal and the only way virtual 2012 R2 servers can be backed up in our environment? Or, is there some configuration on the virtual 2012 R2 servers that needs to be done so that the Hyper-v VSS writers show that it can be backed
up using Child Partition Snapshot. (Yes, I viewed the Hyper-V VSS Writer Caption: for each system on all the nodes and no, I am not talking about what is displayed in DPM 2012 since I understand it may not truly reflect the current backup method)

Answer 1

Have you already checked typical reason for DPM doing saved state backup? If not, find them below.
Also, do your VM have
SCSI controller added? Prior to using Veeam as our primary backup solution, we leveraged DPM and confronted the very same issue. Fortunately, by adding ISCSI controllers to VMs in question we were able to solve the problem.
Conditions when DPM fails to back up Hyper-V virtual machines in an online state
By default, System Center 2012 – Data Protection Manager (DPM) performs a backup of a Hyper-V Virtual Machine (VM) in an online state. However, DPM cannot back up a Hyper-V VM in an online state, if one or more of the following
conditions are true:
Backup (Volume Snapshot) Integration Service is disabled or not installed.
The virtual machine has one or more dynamic disks.
The virtual machine has one or more non-NTFS based volumes.
The virtual machine Cluster Resource Group in a cluster setup is offline.
The virtual machine is not in a running state.
A ShadowStorage assignment of a volume inside the virtual machine is explicitly set to a different volume other than itself.
An App-V drive is installed on the virtual machine that creates a non-NTFS volume.
These conditions are set by the Hyper-V writer. In such a case, the VM is put in a saved state before a snapshot of host volumes are taken (except when the VM is turned off) for a backup. The Hyper-V writer adds the VM in the following format:
For offline backups: Backup Using Saved State\<VMName>
For online backups: Backup Using Child Partition Snapshot\<VMName>
Additional reason if we have less than 300MB free space on a volume in the guest.
Kind regards, Leonardo.