Restoring a Full Virtual Machine In Place Using Live Recovery for Nutanix Prism Element

You can restore a full VMware virtual machine in place using a live recovery operation.

Prerequisites

• If a passkey is configured for restores, you must have the passkey.

• Verify that you are using a supported version of Nutanix Prism Element (AHV). For more information, see System Requirements.

• The Nutanix cluster must support mounting external NFS storage for restore operations.

• The AHV hosts that mount the NFS share for browse and live recovery operations must be able to resolve the MediaAgent (which uses 3DFS components to perform the live recovery). To ensure connectivity, configure proper DNS resolution or create a host file entry for the MediaAgent.

• The Prism Element user account must have sufficient permissions to create, register, power on, and migrate virtual machines and disks within the target storage container.

• The live recovery operation uses a 3DFS cache on the MediaAgent that performs the live recovery. The 3DFS cache is circular, which means that unused data is pruned automatically as needed. By default, 5% free space is maintained on the cache.

  For each live recovery operation, 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 virtual disks for the VM)

  Note

  For faster recovery times, host the 3DFS cache on a solid state drive (SSD) using flash memory storage.

• The same requirements that apply to a MediaAgent also apply to a VSA access node when it is used for live recovery.

• The user performing the live recovery operation must be an owner of the virtualization client and the access node used for the operation.

Start the Restore Wizard

1. From the Command Center navigation pane, go to Protect > Virtual machines.

   The Overview page appears.

2. On the VM groups tab, for the VM that you want to restore, click the action button (...) and then select Restore.

   The Select restore type page appears.

3. Click Live recovery.

   The Live recovery page appears.

4. (Optional) To select a specific MediaAgent and/or source for the restore, in the upper-right area of the page, click the Settings button .

   By default, the Commvault software automatically selects the MediaAgent and source as follows:

   • MediaAgent: The MediaAgent that performed the backup is used.

   • Source: The software searches the primary copy first. If the data is not found, a secondary or auxiliary copy is selected.

   • Select the content to restore, and then click Restore.

   The restore wizard appears.

Perform an In Place Restore Perform an Out of Place Restore for Live Recovery

1. For Type, select In place.

2. For Access node, select Automatic, an access node, or an access node group.

   • If you are restoring multiple VMs, select Automatic to distribute the workload across the access nodes that are assigned to the destination Nutanix cluster.

   • If you select an access node group, the Commvault software distributes the workload across the available access nodes in the group.

3. Click Next.

   The Virtual Machines page appears.

4. Select the VMs to restore.

5. Click Next.

   The Restore Options page appears.

6. Configure the following settings:

   • Unconditionally overwrite if it already exists: Delete an existing VM with the same name and replace it.

   • Reuse Source VM client: Enable to map the restored VM client to the source VM client (Client Name, Host Name, and Client ID).

   • Notify user on job completion: Receive an email notification when the restore completes.

   • Schedule restore job: Enable to run automatically at a specified time or on a recurring schedule instead of running immediately.

7. Click Next.

   The Summary page appears.

Summary

1. Review the summary.

2. Click Finish.