Live Mount for VMware

Live Mount enables you to run a virtual machine directly from a stored backup for that VM.

You can use this feature to validate that backups are usable for a disaster recovery scenario, 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 usage and should not be used for production. Changes to live mounted VMs or their data are not retained when the virtual machine expires. The VM expiration period is set through a VM Lifecycle Management policy.

With Service Pack 9 and later, you can include a policy option to migrate live mounted VMs to a different datastore after the initial live mount expires. The migration option is only supported for streaming backups and IntelliSnap backup copies.

The Live Mount feature uses a 3DFS cache on the MediaAgent that performs the Live Mount. By default, the 3DFS cache is located in the Job Results folder for the MediaAgent; but you can change the path using the s3dfsRootDir additional setting. The 3DFS cache is circular; unused data are pruned from the cache as needed. By default 5% free space is maintained on the cache; but you can change the required percentage of free space using the n3dfsCacheMinFree additional setting.

For each live mount job, the 3DFS cache requires minimum free space equal to the larger of the following values:

• 20 GB

• 15% of the total VM size (the sum of the sizes of all VMDKs for the VM) plus the expected writes to VMDKs during the live mount operation

• Live Mount is supported from streaming backups, IntelliSnap backup copies, or IntelliSnap backups using the following snapshot engines:

  • Dell EMC TimeFinder BCV

  • Dell EMC TimeFinder Clone

  • Dell EMC TimeFinder VP Snap

  • Dell EMC XtremIO Snap

  • NetApp

  • Pure Storage FlashArray Snap