As part of virtual machine archiving, virtual machine disks are deleted from the ESX server when the backup is completed. When a virtual machine is archived, the Annotations section of the virtual machine's Summary tab in the vCenter client shows Archived: Yes. VMDKs are deleted, freeing up the space that had been allocated to them on the datastore. Virtual machine configurations are retained on the production storage or ESX, which points to the backed up data.
Archived virtual machines are available for quick and easy retrieval by administrators and end users (VM recovery). End users can also recover a virtual machine from the Web Console. Archived virtual machines can be recovered as complete virtual machines, virtual machine disks (VMDKs), files, and folders. A virtual machine can be restored to the same ESX or a different ESX. VMDKs can be restored to the datastore of an ESX using the Attach Disk to Existing VM feature.
See the following pages for steps:
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Restoring Full Virtual Machines
Note
When restoring an archived VM, select the Unconditionally Overwrite VM with the same name option.
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Attaching Disks to Existing VMs
Note
You can attach a disk from an archived VM to a non-archived VM. You cannot attach a disk to an archived VM.
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Restoring Guest Files and Folders
Note
You cannot perform an agentless restore to an archived VM.