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Restoring a Full Virtual Machine In Place for VMware

You can restore virtual machines in place, to their original location.

When you initiate a restore operation for a specific VM from the VM groups page or from the Virtual machines page, you can choose to restore the full VM, to use live recovery, or to perform a live mount operation.

If the hypervisor is configured to support vCloud Director, you can restore a virtual machine to vCloud.

Prerequisites

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

  • Verify that you are using a supported version of VMware vCenter Server. For more information, see "VMware vCenter Server Support" in System Requirements for Virtual Server Agent with VMware.

  • VMware licensing must include a license for vMotion operations.

  • The ESX server that is used to mount the NFS datastore for browse and restore operations must be able to resolve the MediaAgent (which uses 3DFS components to perform the live recovery). To ensure connectivity, create a host file entry for the MediaAgent on the ESX server.

  • The vCenter user account must have permissions set as described in Permissions for Custom User Accounts.

Start the Restore Wizard

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

    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 Full virtual machine.

    The Full virtual machine page appears.

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

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

    • MediaAgent: The software uses the MediaAgent that performed the backup.

    • Source: By default, the software searches for the requested data in the primary copy. If the data is not found in the primary copy, the software selects a secondary or auxiliary copy.

    For more information, see MediaAgent and Copy Precedence Considerations for Virtualization Restores.

  5. Optionally, you can select an alternate view to restore backup data:

    1. From the left-side of the page, you can click the drop down arror of the VM List.

      Choose one of the following options:

      • VM List: Lets you identify which VM to restore.

      • VM and Templates: You can browse the content in the hierarchy to restore a VM or a template sorted by hosts and VM folders.

      • Hosts and Clusters: You can browse the content in the hierarchy to restore a VM which is sorted by the hosts or clusters where they reside.

      • Datastores and Datastore Clusters: You can browse the content in the hierarchy to restore a VM which is sorted by the datastores or datastore clusters where they reside.

        Note

        If the views for the VMs have not been backed up, then those VMs are visible at the top level.

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

    The restore wizard appears.

Perform an In Place Restore

  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 for the destination hypervisor. The VMs are assigned to the access nodes that are present on the same host and datastore. If no host or datastore match is found, then any of the available access nodes from the selected destination hypervisor are used.

    If you select an access node group to restore VMs, the Commvault software distributes the workload across the access nodes that are available in the access node group.

  3. Click Next.

    The Virtual Machines page appears.

  4. Click Next.

    The Restore Options page appears.

  5. Specify the following settings:

    • Power on VMs after restore: Automatically start VMs after they are restored.

    • Unconditionally overwrite if it already exists: Overwrites current state of the VM with the restored VM.

      Note

      • During the restore, the Commvault software will only detach the independent disks.

      • To recreate or reattach independent disks to the VM, you must set the RecreateIndependentDisks additional setting to true. The software recreates the independent disk only if the disk does not exist on the current state of the VM.

    • Notify user on job completion: Receive an email notification that the restore is complete.

    • Additional Options: Specify the following:

      • Transport mode, do the following:

        • To have the Commvault software automatically select the best transport mode for the environment, select Auto.

        • To specify a specific transport mode, select the transport mode.

      • Disk provisioning, do the following:

        • To retain the provisioning method that was used at the time of backup, select Original.

        • To specify a different disk provisioning method, select Thick Lazy Zero, Thin, or Thick Eager Zero.

  6. Click Next.

    The Summary page appears.

  7. Review the summary, and then click Submit to start the restore.

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