Backing up multiple instance System Databases with distributed Maintenance Plan I am running maintenance plans on a server, which is running several instances of SQL Server 2104.

I have set up a nightly maintenance plan to run backups for all user databases, with the backups set to create their own sub-directory.

This works absolutely fine with the current setup- with all backups residing in their own specific locations.

However, I was curious as to what would happen if databases on multiple instances shared the same database name - is there any way of adding an extra level in the maintenance plan to include the instance name?
I am not that huge fan of Maintenance plans to use such strategy for Backups.

What suits the best to our environment is using ola.hallengren Backup scripts.

It backups by taking the initial folder as the location define by the user and later it itself identifies the instance that it is backing up and thereafter creates the folder respectively: 

Give it a try , as its simple to execute and easy to maintain.