Restoring Full Virtual Machines for Azure

You can restore virtual machines to the original location or to a different location. By default, a virtual machine is restored to the original hypervisor, using the same proxy as the backup.

You can back up virtual machines configured with Azure unmanaged and managed disks. From these backups, you can restore full virtual machines and restore guest files and folders. Live browse and restore is not supported for VMs that are encrypted with either volume or disk encryption.

Considerations

• If a virtual machine is encrypted using Azure Key Vault:

  • Full VM restores are supported per source subscription. However, restores of encrypted VMs to a different subscription are not supported due to an Azure limitation with restoring Key Vault across subscriptions.

  • Restoring to a different region under the same subscription will create a new key vault automatically, and the restore job will complete successfully. For more information, see AZR0002: Out of place VM restore to different region might fail when source VM is encrypted.

  • Keys and secrets are not accessible to subscription users by default when the Key Vault itself is restored. The restore operation will add only the application's service principal in the Key Vault access control as an authorized user. If necessary, the subscription administrator can make changes to these permissions using the Azure portal.

  • Microsoft restrictions for virtual machines encrypted using Azure Key Vault also apply to encrypted Azure virtual machines in your Commcell environment for restoring your virtual machine and Key Vault. For more information, see Azure Key Vault.

  • For VMs encrypted with customer-managed encryption keys, full VM restores complete successfully; however, for full VM restores from streaming backups, the customer-managed encryption key settings or disk encryption sets (DES) are not applied to the destination VM. You must manually apply the DES settings to the destination VM. For more information, see Configuring Disk Encryption Sets on Destination VM.

• Due to a Microsoft limitation, you cannot change the hostname of a restored virtual machine.

Before You Begin

• To restore Azure VMs to a specific region, verify that all the components in the setup (CommServe computer, VSA proxies) have been upgraded to Service Pack 18 or a more recent service pack.

  Note

  After upgrading to Service Pack 18 or a more recent service pack, you do not need to make changes to the existing recovery targets, replication groups, or Live Sync schedules.

Procedure

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

   The Virtual machines page appears.

2. On the Hypervisors tab, click the hypervisor.

   The hypervisor page appears. The VM groups area displays summary information for any existing VM groups.

3. In the VM groups area, click Restore for the VM group that contains the virtual machine.

4. In the Select restore type page, select Full virtual machine to restore one or more full virtual machines.

5. In the Restore page, expand the tree on the left and select the objects to be restored on the right. Select an item or click on an entry in the Name column to browse within an item.

   In the top right corner of the page, a "Showing" message indicates what backup data is being displayed. You can click the down arrow beside this message and select any of the following options:

   • Show latest backups: Only display data for the most recent backups.

   • Show backups as of a specific date: Only display data up to the date you specify.

6. Click Restore.

   The Restore options dialog box appears.

7. Provide the requested information:

   • Type: Select one of the following options:

     • In place: Restore to the original location.

       To avoid overwriting the original source VM, edit the VM display name for an in-place restore.

     • Out of place: Restore to a different location.

   • Restore as: To restore to a different virtualization platform, select the target environment from the list.

     By default, the Restore as list shows the source hypervisor.

     To restore to a different virtualization platform, see Cross-Hypervisor Restores.

   • Destination: Select the destination hypervisor for the restore operation.

   • Access node: Select a VSA proxy for the restore.

   • If you are restoring multiple VMs, click the All VMs tab on the bottom left to specify configuration values for all VMs you are restoring, or the name of each VM to specify values individually. Specify the following values:

     • VM display name: (Optional) To change the name of an individual VM, enter the new display name in the box.

     • Enable edit destination VM name: (Optional) When restoring multiple VMs, to change the names of destination VMs, select this option, select Prefix or Suffix, and then enter a string to append to the original display name to create new destination VM names.

     • Resource group: (Azure Resource Manager only) Enter a name in the box to specify the resource group for the restored VM.

     • Region: Select the region for the restored VM.

     • Storage account: Select an Azure Standard or Premium general-purpose storage account. You can select a different storage account for each virtual machine and disk.

       The storage accounts listed are only those associated with the selected region for the restored VM.

     • VM size: Select a size specification for the restored virtual machine.

     • Network interface: Select a network connection for the restored VM, or leave the default value of Auto Select.

     • Create public IP: (Azure Resource Manager only) If a public IP address is not required on restored VMs, clear the checkbox.

     • Security Group: (Azure Resource Manager only) Specify a network security group for the restored VM or leave the default value of Auto Select.

     • Restore as a managed VM: To restore virtual machines as managed virtual machines, select this check box.

       When you select this option, the restore operation creates virtual machine disks in the specified storage account, converts them to managed disks, and then attaches the disks to the restored virtual machine.

   • Power ON Virtual Machine after Restore: To automatically start the virtual machine after the restore is complete, select this check box.

     Note the following:

     • The power state of the virtual machine does not affect subsequent backups.

     • If the virtual machine is powered on during the backup operation, by default, the VM is powered on after the restore completes (unless you clear this check box).

     • If you perform an out-of-place restore, by default, the VM is powered off after the restore completes (regardless of the value selected for this option).

   • Unconditionally overwrite if it already exists: Delete an existing virtual machine and replace it with the restored VM.

8. Click Submit to run the restore job.