Replication Using the HotAdd Restore Method

HotAdd Restores

HotAdd restores for Amazon provide faster performance than traditional restores. By using an access node that is running on an Amazon instance, the restore operation can write directly to Elastic Block Storage (EBS) and inject Amazon drivers that are required for destination instances.

HotAdd restores are used for the following operations:

Restores
Live sync operations
Conversion from VMware to Amazon, for the following VMware guest operating systems:
- Windows
  - Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 (Standard, Web Server, Datacenter, Enterprise) (64-bit only)
    
    Note
    
    For VM conversion or live sync replication of guest VMs that run Windows Server 2008 R2 and later versions, validation might fail for the converted instance in AWS. To resolve this issue, set the RealTimeIsUniversal registry key on the source VM as described in the AWS article Configure time settings for Windows Server 2008 and later, and then perform a new backup to use as the source for the conversion or replication.
  - Microsoft Windows Server 2012 (Standard, Datacenter) (64-bit only)
  - Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 (Standard, Datacenter) (64-bit only) (Nano Server installation not supported)
  - Microsoft Windows Server 2016 (Standard, Datacenter) (64-bit only)
  - Microsoft Windows Server 1709 (Standard, Datacenter) (64-bit only)
  - Microsoft Windows Server 1803 (Standard, Datacenter) (64-bit only)
  - Microsoft Windows Server 2019 (Standard, Datacenter) (64-bit only)
  - Microsoft Windows 10 (Home, Professional, Enterprise, Education) (US English) (64-bit only)
- Linux
  - CentOS 6.x
  - CentOS 7.x
  - CentOS 8.x
  - Oracle Linux 6.x
  - Oracle Linux 7.x
  - Oracle Linux 8.x
  - Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.x
  - Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.x
  - Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.x
  - SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 and above
  - Ubuntu 14.04
  - Ubuntu 14.10
  - Ubuntu 15.04
  - Ubuntu 16.04
  - Ubuntu 16.10
  - Ubuntu 17.04
  - Ubuntu 18.04
  - Ubuntu 20.04
  - Ubuntu 21.10
  - Ubuntu 22.x

Support for Linux Driver Injection for VM Conversion to Amazon EC2

With automatic driver injection, you can recover, migrate and replicate Linux-based VMware, Hyper-V, and Azure VMs to Amazon EC2 instances. To ensure optimal performance, Commvault will modify the default initial ramdisk (initrd) to include the Amazon Paravirtual (Xen), NVMe, and Enhanced Networking (ENA) drivers.

Commvault supports the following:

Conversion to Paravirtual (PV) and Hardware Virtual Machine (HVM).
Automatic driver injection for the following versions of Linux, however guest VMs have to be from Red Hat distribution:
- CentOS 7.x
- CentOS 8.x
- RHEL8
- CentOS 7.x
- Oracle Linux 7
- Oracle Linux 8

For more information about the automatic driver injection process, see Automatically Inject Xen and Nitro Drivers for Linux Guest VMs.

Supported Volume and File System Types

Windows

Instances with volumes that use Master Boot Record (MBR) and GUID Partition Table (GPT) partitioning are supported.

Linux

Linux VMs that use one of the following for the root file system: ext2, ext3, ext4, Btrfs, JFS, or XFS.

HotAdd Restore Process

Windows:

Create empty EBS volumes.
Attach EBS volumes to access node.

Up to 21 volumes can be attached to the VSA proxy during cross-hypervisor restores or live sync replication, occupying device slots xvdf - xvdz.
Restore data to EBS volumes.

A snapshot of the EBS volumes is taken and retained as an integrity snapshot for reference during the next incremental replication.
Inject AWS components and drivers.
Detach volumes from the access node.
Create or reuse an instance based on the type of replication:
- In case of a full replication, a new instance is created from the EBS volumes.
- In case of an incremental replication, the EBS volumes are attached to the existing destination instance.

Linux:

Create empty EBS volumes.

Up to 40 volumes can be attached to the VSA proxy during cross-hypervisor restores or live sync replication, occupying device slots xvdf - xvdz, or if the slots start with xvd, then xvdba - xvdbz, or a combination of both.
Attach EBS volumes to access node.
Restore data to EBS volumes.

A snapshot of the EBS volumes is taken and retained as an integrity snapshot for reference during the next incremental replication.
Detach volumes from the access node.
Create or reuse an instance based on the type of replication:
- In case of a full replication, a new instance is created from the EBS volumes.
- In case of an incremental replication, the EBS volumes are attached to the existing destination instance.

For information about installing drivers manually, see Preparing the Source VM for Conversion to an Amazon EC2 Instance.