I have an old backup taken with Legacy vRanger (3.x and previous) in a tvzc arvhile file format. I need to restore this backup, and I do not have the orginal software to use for restore.
Manual restore Process from a compressed archive in vRanger to a Single ESX host with local VMFS
Solution
This is a how-to restore a esxRanger Pro 3.1 tvzc backup by hand
(Commands are printed in BOLD font)
Download the attached file. NOTE: you can not run this binary from a VMFS it must be extracted and copied to the host first
NOTE: if you’re going to use WinScp make sure to "disable transfer resume" in preferences. This will remove any errors when sending large files to the VMFS3.
Extract using Winzip or WinRAR (or any archive app of your choice) and save to a folder on the Desktop.
Click login to connect to your ESX host for SCP transfer.
Then using WinSCP (for this example, available free on the Internet, Google for it’s location) copy the extracted file from the Desktop to the /tmp directory on your ESX host. Just click the file and drag it over to the left window.
Next we need to copy our backup archive to the ESX host. Click in the right pane and select the VMFS datasore you would like to copy the backup archive to.
Then just drag and drop the archive into the right window with the proper datastore selected
Our backup archive is now transferred to the ESX host.
Connect to ESX host using SecureCRT or Putty. In this instance we use Putty.
Enter your host IP
And click open.
We are presented with the ESX console login
Type in your nonroot user account and press Enter
Type in your nonroot password and press Enter
Then type in su and enter your root password, this will give us root shell access.
We are now at the Linux shell on the host ESX server.
Run chmod 777 /tmp/vcbrestore
Now we need to change to the directory that we copied our *.tvzc file to.
Type: cd /vmfs/volumes/storage1/cjm2k3 this is the location we noted when transferring our tzvc file via WinSCP
Type in ls –lah to enumerate folder contents and details
Here you can see the tvzc file we copied earlier via WinSCP, we are now ready to decompress our archive.
Next we need to list the files in our archive so we know what to extract. Type the following command and press enter (replace the tzvc file name with your particular file name) (In this instance vcbrestore file is stored in the /usr/bin system path so we only need to type the command and not the path to the command, this is up to your preference where you place this file):
vcbrestore –D –I ./cjm2k3_3.tzvc –O /dev/stdout | tar tvf - -O
The output should list the files available in the archive. If not then check your syntax or archive integrity.
Now we need to extract the files we need from the archive. The files we need to restore the VM are *.vmdk, *.vmx.vzsnp, and *.vmdk.vzsnp To do that type the following command and press enter (replace the vm file names with your particular file names) :
vcbrestore –D –I ./cjm2k3_3.tvzc –O /dev/stdout | tar xvf – cjm2k3-flat.vmdk cjm2k3.vmx.vzsnp cjm2k3.vmdk.vzsnp
Next we need to remove the vzsnp file extensions from our vmx an vmdk header files to do this type:
mv cjm2k3.vmx.vzsnp cjm2k3.vmx
mv cjm2k3.vmdk.vzsnp cjm2k3.vmdk
Now that this is done we are ready to register and power on our virtual machine. To do this type the following commands (replace the path indicated here with the path to your restored VM) :
vmware-cmd –s register /vmfs/volumes/storage1/cjm2k3/cjm2k3.vmx
vmware-cmd cjm2k3.vmx start
I f you receive a status of 1 on register and power on then you should be good to go. Login to you VI client and check if the VM exists. If you did not receive a status of 1, then you may need to edit your machine header files. Once the VM is up and running rm tvzc to remove the files from the VMFS.
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