With Live Mount, you can run a virtual machine directly from a stored backup for that VM.
You can use this feature to validate that backups are usable for disaster recovery, to validate the content on the backup, or to access data from the virtual machine directly instead of restoring guest files.
Virtual machines that are live mounted are intended for short term use—not for production. Changes to live mounted VMs or their data are not retained when the virtual machine expires. The VM expiration period is specified in the lifecycle policy.
You can include a policy option to migrate live mounted VMs to a different datastore after the initial live mount expires. You can use the migration option only for streaming backups and IntelliSnap backup copies. For more information, see create a life cycle policy.
You can use Live Mount with the following types of backups:
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Streaming backups
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IntelliSnap backup copies
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IntelliSnap backups using snapshot engines that support the Live Mount feature.
Configuration
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Consider the space required for live mount operations. The live mount feature uses a 3DFS cache on the MediaAgent that performs the live mount. For each live mount job, the 3DFS cache requires minimum free space equal to the larger of the following values:
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20 GB
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15% of the total VM size (the sum of the sizes of all disks for the VM) plus the expected writes to disks during the live mount operation. In addition, consider the space required for an OS boot.
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Live mounts must specify a destination that is different from the source VM. Only out-of-place live mounts are supported.
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To enable non-admin users to perform live mount operations, create a life cycle policy that supports live mount operations.
If no life cycle policy is defined for live mounts, the Command Center administrator (who belongs to the master user group) or an MSP administrator (who is assigned the Master role) can perform live mounts without specifying a life cycle policy.