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Backup and Restore Agents > Virtualization > Virtual Server Agent > VMware > Restores > Attaching Disks to Existing VMs

Attaching Disks to Existing VMware VMs

You can attach one or more virtual machine disks of a backed up virtual machine (source virtual machine) to an existing virtual machine (target virtual machine).

This feature is useful in the following scenarios:

  • A virtual machine has multiple disks, but you only want to restore some of the disks.
  • You want to copy and add disks from one virtual machine into another virtual machine.
  • You want to quickly restore a disk and access the data on the disk.

Note the following considerations:

  • You can restore disks to a virtual machine when the target VM is powered off.
  • Ensure that the datastore where the .vmx file for the destination VM is located has free space at least equal to the total size of the VM. A temporary VM is created on that datastore during the restore. This space requirement is in addition to the space required on the datastore where the disk is restored.
  • If a virtual machine is archived, you cannot restore disks to that virtual machine.
  • A virtual RDM is restored as a regular thick disk.
  • You cannot attach disks to a virtual machine if the fault tolerance option is enabled for that virtual machine

Procedure

  1. From the CommCell Browser, expand Client Computers > virtualization_client > Virtual Server > VMware.
  2. Right-click the backup set that contains the data to restore, and then select All Tasks > Browse and Restore.
  3. In the Browse and Restore Options dialog box, select Attach Disks to Existing VM and then click View Content.
  4. Navigate to the source virtual machine in the left pane.

    All VMDK files of the virtual machine are selected automatically in the right pane.

    • To restore all disks, leave the default selections for the VM in the right pane.
    • To restore selected disks, clear the selections in the right pane for disks that should not be restored.
  5. Click Recover All Selected.
  6. In the Restore Options for All Selected Items dialog box:

    Option

    Steps

    Select a proxy:

    When you are attaching disks to an existing virtual machine, the restore operation will be faster if you use a proxy on the same host where the target virtual machine exists.

    • Select a proxy from the Destination Client list.

    Restore all disks from source virtual machine:

    You can restore all disks from the source VM and attach them to a target VM:

    • Click in the first row of Restore to Existing VM column, and then click the browse button (...) to select the target virtual machine.

    Restore selected disks:

    Restore only selected disks and attach to the target VM:

    • Click in the first row of Restore to Existing VM column, and then click the browse button (...) to select the target virtual machine.

    Rename disks

    To rename a virtual machine disk, enter the new name in the row for the disk under the Change Disk name to column.

    If you do not enter a value for a disk, the disk will be renamed using the new VM name. If a disk already exists with the specified name, a numeric suffix is added to ensure that the disk name is unique (for example, name_1.vmdk).

    Overwrite disks in the source or target VM:

    You can overwrite disks in the target virtual machine. You can also restore a disk to its original location.

    1. Click in the first row of the Restore to Existing VM column, and then click the browse button (...) to select the target virtual machine.
      • To restore a disk to its original location, select the source virtual machine in the Restore to Existing VM column.
      • To overwrite a disk on the target virtual machine, ensure that the VMDK file name on the target VM is the same as the VMDK file name on the source VM.
      • To overwrite the disk attached to the SCSI (0:0) port of a virtual machine, you must turn off that virtual machine.
    2. Select the Unconditionally overwrite Disks with the same name check box. The disk on the target machine is overwritten by the disk from the source machine.

    Select a datastore:

    For each restored disk, select the target datastore from the Datastore column.

    Disk provisioning:
    • Use the default value (Original) to retain the provisioning method used at the time of backup.
    • Select a value from the Disk Provisioning list to force a specific disk provisioning method: Thick Lazy Zero, Thick Eager Zero, or Thin.

    Transport mode:
    • Use the default value (Auto) to let the Virtual Server Agent determine the most suitable transport mode based on the setup.
    • Select a value from the Transport Mode list to force a specific transport method: SAN, HotAdd, NBD, NBD SSL, or NAS.
  7. Click OK.

Result

The source virtual machine disks are restored and attached to the target virtual machine.

Last modified: 3/12/2019 6:57:09 PM