Restoring Full Virtual Machines

You can restore an entire virtual machine to the original location or to a new host with a different virtual machine name. When browsing virtual machines for a restore, the full machine restore option is selected by default.

Full virtual machine restores are useful in the following situations:

• You are unable to turn on the virtual machine, but the disks (VHD files) are available for the machine.

• You want to restore an entire virtual machine to a specific point in time.

• You want to move the virtual machine to a new Hyper-V host. If the virtual machine's original location is not optimal, moving the VM to a new host enables you to distribute restored virtual machines to a location with greater space and resource availability.

You can change the name of a virtual machine or of virtual machine disk files when restoring a virtual machine to a new location or to the Hyper-V default folder. Renaming the virtual machine avoids data loss if a virtual machine or disk with the same name already exists in the specified location.

For details on checkpoint Information during restores, see Use of Checkpoint Information for Restores Using Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 R2.

Restoring to a Cluster Shared Volume

You can restore a virtual machine to a Cluster Shared Volume (CSV) in a Hyper-V cluster.

Before you restore, in the Failover Cluster Manager, identify the owner of the CSV where you want to restore the virtual machine.

Make sure that the user account provided during the creation of the virtualization client is part of the following administrator groups:

• Hyper-V Administrators group

• Local Administrators group (for Windows Hyper-V Server 2008 R2)

For a Hyper-V cluster, the user account must have full Cluster Permissions (Read and Full Control).

Considerations

• If a virtual machine is added to subclient content or to a filter by browsing and selecting the VM display name, discovery is performed based on the GUID for the VM. If that virtual machine is later restored in place from a backup, a new GUID is generated, and that virtual machine is no longer identified correctly. To identify that VM, you must remove the old rule, then add a new rule or use a name pattern to select the VM.

  For instructions on discovery rules, see Adding Subclient Content Using Discovery Rules.

• If you perform an out-of-place restore for a Hyper-V 2016 virtual machine that was configured with pass-through disks, and the source VM remains in place, the restored VM might fail to start. To start the restored VM, remove the pass-through disks manually.

• If you select Full Virtual Machine as the restore type, you cannot select a configuration file or a VHD file for the selected virtual machines.

• If you restore a shared folder from one client computer to another client computer, the share status of the folder is restored.

• Backed up data from clients running the current Commvault version cannot be restored to clients running older versions.

• If a virtual machine with the same name already exists on the selected Hyper-V server, all the data and configuration of the virtual machine will be overwritten by the restored virtual machine. To avoid this, you can change the name of the virtual machine while restoring it to a different Hyper-V server.

• Windows 2012 R2 virtual machines must be restored to a Windows 2012 R2 Hyper-V server. Restores to an earlier version of Hyper-V server (Windows 2012 or 2008 R2) is not supported.

Procedure

1. From the CommCell Browser, expand Client Computers > virtualization_client > Virtual Server >Hyper-V > backup_set.

2. Start the restore from a subclient or backup set:

   • From the subclient, right-click the subclient and then select Browse and Restore.

   • From the backup set, right-click the backup set, point to All Tasks, and click Browse and Restore.

3. In the Browse and Restore Options dialog box, ensure that Full Virtual Machine is selected, and then click View Content.

4. From the list of backed up virtual machines, select one or more virtual machines that you want to restore, and then click Recover All Selected.

   The Restore VM wizard launches and displays the Destination page.

5. Specify the destination and the proxy to be used for the restore.

   By default, VMs are restored in place to the original location for the source VM, and the restore is performed using the preferred VSA proxy for the virtualization client.

   • In Place: Clear this checkbox to restore out of place.

   • Virtualization Client: Displays the virtualization client for the source VM. To restore to a different Hyper-V environment, select a different virtualization client from the list.

   • Instance Details: Displays the user account for the selected virtualization client.

   • Proxy Client: Displays the default VSA proxy for the restore. To use a different proxy, select a Hyper-V server from the list. Only proxies that match the type of the virtualization client are displayed.

     When a virtual machine is restored, it is automatically mounted to the Hyper-V Server of the specified destination client.

     If you are restoring to a CSV volume, select the client that owns the volume.

6. Click Next.

   The wizard displays the Virtual Machines page.

7. For an out-of-place restore, specify parameters for the restore:

   Note

   For a successful out-of-place restore, ensure that the proxy client and the destination host are the same virtual machine; and that the destination location is a CSV.

   • Select one of the following options:

     • New folder: Restore the virtual machine to a different location on the original Hyper-V server. This is useful when you want to restore the virtual machine to a point in time and want to retain the current data and configuration of the virtual machine.

     • Hyper V default folder: Restore the virtual machine to the default location of the Hyper-V Server. This is useful when you are restoring a virtual machine to a different Hyper-V server, and you do not know which volume on the server has the required space to restore the virtual machine.

   • VM and Disk: This column displays the names of the virtual machines to be restored. Expand a virtual machine to view the disks in that virtual machine.

   • Change VM Display/Disk name to: To rename any VM or disk, click in row for the VM or disk, and then enter the new name.

     If you rename a disk, do not change the file extension.

   • Destination Hyper-V Host: In the row for a VM, click ..., and from the hypervisor list, select the destination host.

   • Destination Path: In the row for a VM, click ..., and then select a destination folder on the client where you want to restore all the disks on the virtual machine.

     If you are restoring to a CSV, specify the path of the CSV to which the VM should be restored.

     If you want to restore each disk in the different location, click the row for each disk in the Destination Path column and select a location for the disk.

   • Settings: To change multiple settings for one or more VMs, select the VMs. In the Settings column, click Configure, and then select from the following options:

     • VM display Name: If you selected a single VM, this box shows the display name to be used for the restored VM. You cannot change that value on the Settings dialog box.

     • Edit Destination VM Name: If you selected multiple VMs, you can add a prefix or a suffix to the display names for all selected virtual machines as part of the restore operation. Click Prefix or Suffix and then type the prefix or suffix to be added to the display name.

     • Register Virtual Machines with Failover Cluster: Select this option to register the restored VM with the failover cluster immediately after the restore. After a virtual machine is registered, it can migrate to any Hyper-V server within the cluster.

     • Network Adapter Configuration: Select an available network adapter from the Network Adapter list.

       By default, the network adapter of the original VM is selected automatically if the same network adapter is available on the Hyper-V Server.

       If you select Not Connected, the virtual machine is restored without a network connection.

     • On a 2008 R2 Hyper-V server with the failover cluster, if the UAC (User Account Control) is enabled, you must manually register the restored virtual machine.

8. Click Next.

   The wizard displays the Restore Options page.

9. Select restore options:

   • Disk Provisioning: Select from Original, Fixed and Dynamic.

     • Original: (default) Select to use the same disk provisioning that the source virtual machine used at the time of backup.

     • Fixed: Select to allocate disk space for all disks. A fixed virtual disk has reserved storage that is the same size as the virtual disk itself.

     • Dynamic: Select to allocate disk space for all disks. Dynamic disk storage is not reserved and is allocated as needed during runtime. This allows for storage over commitment under the assumption that most disks are not fully utilized and storage capacity can be utilized better.

   • Power ON Virtual Machine after Restore: Optional: Select this check box to start the virtual machine automatically after the restore is complete.

   • Unconditionally Overwrite VM and VHDs in destination path: Optional: Select this check box to replace virtual machines and VM disks with the same name at the specified destination.

10. Click Next.

    The wizard displays the Job Options page.

11. Run the job immediately or configure a schedule for the restore.

12. Click Next.

    The wizard displays a Summary page for the restore.

13. To further customize the restore operation, click Advanced.

    For more information about advanced options, see Advanced Restore Options.

14. Click Finish to submit the restore job.

What To Do Next

When restoring a Hyper-V virtual machine from a Windows 2008 host to a Windows 2012 R2 host, the network adapter settings are not restored. You must manually attach the network adapter after the restore is complete.