Performing Live Recovery of Virtual Machines for Hyper-V

You can use the Live Recovery feature to recover virtual machines (VMs) from a backup without waiting for a full restore of the VM. In addition, you can configure the VMs to power on during the restore operation. This feature can be especially useful when a VM has failed and needs to be placed back in production quickly, or to validate that a backup can be used in a disaster recovery scenario.

Live recovery uses a 3DFS cache on the MediaAgent that performs the operation. By default, the 3DFS cache is located in the Job Results folder for the MediaAgent, but you can change the path using the s3dfsRootDir additional setting. The 3DFS cache is circular, that is, unused data are pruned from the cache as needed.

Prerequisites

If a passkey is configured for restores, you must have the passkey.

Procedure

From the Command Center navigation pane, go to Protect > Virtualization.

The Overview page appears.
Click the VM groups tab.

The VM group page appears.
On the VM groups tab, in the row for the VM group, click the action button , and then click Restore.

The Select restore type page appears.
To select a specific MediaAgent and/or source for the restore, in the upper-right area of the page, click the Settings button .

By default, the Commvault software automatically selects the MediaAgent and source as follows:
- MediaAgent: The software uses the MediaAgent that performed the backup.
- Source: By default, the software searches for the requested data in the primary copy. If the data is not found in the primary copy, the software selects a secondary or auxiliary copy.
For more information, see MediaAgent and Copy Precedence Considerations for Virtualization Restores.
Select Full virtual machine.

The Restore options dialog box appears.

Note

If you initiated a restore operation from the Virtual machines page, on the Select restore type page, select Live Recovery.
Select one of the following restore options:
- In place: Restores the VM to the original location.
  
  Provide the following information:
  1. For Access node, to use a different access node (also called a proxy) for the restore, select it from the list.
    
    When you restore multiple VMs, select Automatic to distribute the workload (VMs) in the restore job across the access nodes (also called proxies) that are assigned for the destination hypervisor.
    
    The VMs are assigned to access nodes based on a host match.
  2. To delete an existing virtual machine that has the same name and replace it with the restored VM, select Unconditionally overwrite if it already exists.
  3. To enable the restored VM to migrate to another node in the cluster, select Register virtual machine with failover cluster.
- Out of place: Restores the VM to a different location.
  
  Provide the following information:
  1. For Destination, to restore to a different cluster, select the virtualization client for the cluster from the list.
  2. For Access node, to use a different access node (also called a proxy) for the restore, select it from the list.
    
    When you restore multiple VMs, select Automatic to distribute the workload (VMs) in the restore job across the access nodes (also called proxies) that are assigned for the destination hypervisor.
    
    The VMs are assigned to access nodes based on a host match.
  3. For Restore location, select the appropriate folder to which the restore should occur.
  4. For VM display name, type a new virtual machine name in the box.
    
    If an existing VM with the same name exists on the destination host and you do not select Unconditionally overwrite if it already exists, the Live Recovery restore job fails.
  5. For Network adapter, select an available network adapter from the list.
    
    By default, the network adapter of the original VM is automatically selected 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.
  6. To delete an existing virtual machine that has the same name and replace it with the restored VM, select Unconditionally overwrite if it already exists.
  7. To enable the restored VM to migrate to another node in the cluster, select Register virtual machine with failover cluster.
Configure Additional options:
- For Restore virtual machine using live recovery, move the toggle button to the right to enable the feature.
- To delay the migration of the VM to the destination location, select the specified time (0-12 hours) in the Delay migration box.
Click Submit.