VM Conversion Using the Import Method

If the prerequisites for HotAdd restores are not met, conversion or replication to Amazon uses the import method:

1. Upload the virtual machine disks to S3 as pages.

   The naming convention for the temporary S3 bucket that is used to hold VHD files is gx-restore-region_name-account_id. You can override the default naming convention for S3 buckets by adding the AmazonBucketForImport additional setting to the VSA access node.

   For instructions about adding the additional setting from the CommCell Console, see Add or Modify an Additional Setting.

2. Merge the pages uploaded for each disk to form a single VHD.

3. Import the OS disk as an AMI and additional disks as snapshots.

4. Launch an Amazon instance from the imported AMI and attach the additional disks (volumes) from the imported snapshots.

5. Delete the AMI and snapshots from AWS and the merged VHDs from the S3 bucket.

If you are using the import method for restores, when you restore a full Amazon EC2, convert a VM to an Amazon EC2 instance, or replicate a VM to Amazon EC2 by using the import method, Commvault automatically creates an Amazon S3 bucket for the destination. The bucket is named gx-restore-region_name-account_id, where region_name is the name of the AWS region and account_id is the AWS account for the hypervisor.