Using standard Commvault components and configurations with the Virtual Server Agent (VSA), you can restore full VMs, VMDK files, and guest files and folders, or attach a restored virtual machine disk to an existing VM.
Depending on your requirements for restoring VM data, you can deploy different components and use different configurations or backup strategies.
Note
Ensure that Commvault users have ownership and permissions sufficient to perform restore operations.
The following table provides an overview of additional use cases for restoring VM data, including any required components, configuration options, or backup requirements. Unless otherwise noted, these features are available for restores of data for VMs running any guest operating system supported by VMware (for example, Windows and Linux VMs).
Live Features
|
Use Case |
Required Components |
Configuration |
Backup |
More Information |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Live VM Recovery – Recover and power on a VM directly from backup without waiting for a complete restore. |
MediaAgent (includes 3dfs support) ESX server to mount NFS datastore for browse and restore |
Standard (client, proxies, and subclient) |
Streaming backups, IntelliSnap backup copies, or IntelliSnap backups using NetApp snapshot engines. |
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|
Live Mount – Run a temporary VM directly from stored backup. |
MediaAgent (includes 3dfs support) |
Refresh Datacenters Live Mount provisioning policy |
Streaming backups, IntelliSnap backup copies, or IntelliSnap backups using NetApp snapshot engines. |
|
|
Live Browse or Live File Recovery – Browse and restore files without requiring metadata collection during backup (granular recovery option). |
VSA installed on MediaAgent. For Windows VMs, NTFS file system. Linux access node with MediaAgent is required for expanded UNIX file system support: ext4, XFS, JFS, HFS, HFS Plus, or Btrfs file systems. |
Proxy ESX Server Preferred Linux access node for instance (if deployed) |
Backups residing on magnetic disk libraries Only used when there is no metadata available for a backup job (fails if partial metadata was collected for any VMs in a subclient) |
Additional File Recovery Options
The following options can be used with granular recovery or Live File Recovery.
|
Use Case |
Required Components |
Configuration |
Backup |
More Information |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Guest agent restores of files and folders – Supports recovery of larger amounts of data and provides best performance. |
File system agent installed on destination client (in full or restore-only mode) |
Standard (client, proxies, and subclient) |
Any backup type |
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Agentless restores – Restore small files and folders into a virtual machine. |
VMware tools or open-vm-tools on destination VM |
Standard (client, proxies, and subclient) |
Any backup type |