Performing a Live Mount

Perform a live mount to run a virtual machine directly from a stored backup.

You can use this feature to validate that backups are usable for disaster recovery, to validate the content on the backup, or to access data from the virtual machine directly instead of restoring guest files.

Virtual machines that are live mounted are intended for short term use—not for production. Changes to live mounted VMs or their data are not retained when the virtual machine expires. The VM expiration period is specified in the lifecycle policy.

Before You Begin

• Run a backup for any VMs that will be live mounted.

• To enable non-admin users to perform live mount operations, define a life cycle policy that supports live mount operations.

  If no life cycle policy is defined for live mounts, the Command Center administrator (who belongs to the master user group) or an MSP administrator (who is assigned the Master role) can perform live mounts without specifying a life cycle policy.

• If you initiate a live mount operation from the details page for a VM, you can select a specific recovery point. For more information, see Viewing Virtual Machine Information.

Procedure

1. From the navigation pane, go to Solutions > Virtualization.

   The Hypervisors tab appears.

2. On the Virtual machines tab, under Actions, click and then select Restore.

   The Select restore type dialog box appears.

3. To restore from a specific copy of backup data, in the upper-right corner of the page, from the Select source list, select the copy.

   If you select Automatic (default), the restore operation searches for the requested data in the primary copy, and automatically selects a different copy if the data is not found in the primary copy.

4. Click Live mount.

5. Provide the following information:

   • Destination host (admin users only): Browse to select the host where the virtual machine should be mounted.

     By default, the virtual machine is mounted on the original host.

   • Live mount policy: Select the policy to be used for the live mount operation.

     This option does not appear if no live mount policy is defined.

   • Virtual machine name: Enter a display name for the live mounted VM.

     By default, "VM" is appended to the end of the source VM name to create the display name for the live mounted VM.

   • Expiration time (admin users only): Specify the number of hours that a live mounted VM can run before it expires.

   • Network: Select one of the following options:

     • No connection: Mount the VM without a network connection.

     • Original network: Mount the VM with the same network connection as the source VM.

     • Available networks: Select a network to be used for the live mounted VM.

6. Click Submit.