Prepare source virtual machines for recovery to a VMware cleanroom site

Verify disk references in fstab

Before performing the backup that you will use for recovery, verify that the /etc/fstab file uses UUID-based disk references instead of device names.

Device names can change during recovery, which can prevent the recovered VM from booting.

To verify the configuration:

cat /etc/fstab

Example:

UUID=9d8e6d1f-5f3d-4d1e-b7c9-2d1b9f5f8f1a / ext4 defaults 0 1

Verify VMware storage drivers

For Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Oracle Linux, and SUSE Linux VMs, verify that the VMware Paravirtual SCSI (vmw_pvscsi) driver is available before performing the backup that you will use for recovery.

1. Check whether the driver is built into the kernel:

grep -i pvscsi /boot/config-$(uname -r)

1. Verify whether the driver is already included in the initramfs image:

lsinitrd | grep -i vmw_pvscsi

1. If the driver is not present, rebuild the initramfs image and add the driver:

dracut --force --add-drivers "vmw_pvscsi" -v

1. Verify that the driver was added successfully:

lsinitrd | grep -i vmw_pvscsi

Amazon EC2 instances

For Linux Amazon EC2 instances, only instances created from Hardware Virtual Machine (HVM) AMIs are supported.

No additional driver preparation is required for supported Windows operating systems.

VMs that host Active Directory

For VMs that host Active Directory, if you want the Commvault software to automatically perform health checks of your recovered Active Directory environment, install the Commvault Active Directory package.

The health checks validate the following critical services:

• Netlogon

• NTDS

• KDC

• From the Command Center navigation pane, go to Manage > Infrastructure > Servers.

• In the row for the VM, click the action button , select Maintenance, and then select Add software.

• From the Select packages list, select Active Directory, and then click OK.

• Click Install.

Recovering individual files

If you want the ability to recover individual files after recovery, install the Commvault File System package on the source VM.

1. From the Command Center navigation pane, go to Manage > Infrastructure > Servers.

2. In the row for the VM, click the action button , select Maintenance, and then select Add software.

3. From the Select packages list, select File System, and then click OK.

4. Click Install.

Hyper-V differencing disks

For Hyper-V VMs that use differencing disks (AVHD or AVHDX files), merge the differencing disks with the parent disk before performing the backup that you will use for recovery.

For instructions, see How to merge checkpoints that have multiple differencing disks in the Microsoft documentation.