NetVault Plug-in for VMware 10.0.5

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Restoring data

To restore a full virtual machine or individual virtual disks

In the Navigation pane, click Create Restore Job.

In the saveset table, select the saveset that you want to use, and click Next.

The table displays the saveset name (Job Title and Saveset ID), creation date and time, and saveset size. Note the following:

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The list is sorted alphabetically by saveset name. You can sort the list by a different column or reverse the sort order by clicking the column heading. The arrowhead next to the column name indicates the sort order.

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You can use one or more filters to display specific savesets on this page. You can also search for a data item in savesets and view the media list for a saveset. For more information about the additional features, see Using additional features available on the Choose Saveset page.

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When you select a saveset, the following details are displayed in the Saveset Information area: Job ID, Job Title, name of the NetVault Backup Server, name of the client from which the data was backed up, plug‑in used to create the saveset, saveset creation date and time, saveset retirement setting, whether Incremental Backup or not, whether Archive or not, and saveset size.

On the Create Selection Set page, select the images that you want to restore.

You can also open the images, and select the individual virtual disks that you want to restore.


	NOTE: If you select an Incremental or a Differential Backup, the plug-in automatically restores all savesets in the backup sequence up to the selected saveset. The plug-in does not perform any unnecessary steps to read, send, or write disk sectors that have changed in a later backup. Each sector is restored only once.

Click Edit Plugin Options, and in the Plug-in for VMware Restore Options dialog box, configure the following settings.

Table 1. Options for full virtual machine recovery

Option

Description

Recover VM

To restore a full virtual machine or one or more virtual disks, select this option.

Relocate to Alternate Datastore

A datastore represents a storage location for virtual machine files. It can be a VMFS volume, directory on Network Attached Storage, or local file system path. A datastore is platform- and host-independent.

To change the datastore for a virtual machine, specify the destination datastore name for the virtual machine. You can use this option when the original datastore is unavailable, inaccessible, or cannot hold the virtual machine due to lack of space. Verify that the name is correct and the datastore is accessible to the ESX Server Host. When you configure an alternate datastore, all virtual disk and configuration files associated with a virtual machine are restored to a single datastore. Verify that the target datastore has sufficient disk space to hold the virtual machine files.

The restore fail if the datastore is invalid or inaccessible or does not have sufficient space to store virtual machine files.

Allocate to Different Resource Pool

A resource pool represents the CPU and memory resources that are available to an ESX Server host or a cluster of hosts. These resources are made available to the individual virtual machines controlled by the host. Resource pools can be configured in terms of absolute minimum and maximum quantities or relative shares. To run a virtual machine, it must be allocated a resource pool.

By default, a virtual machine is allocated to its original resource pool during restore. To allocate a virtual machine to an alternate resource pool, specify the target resource pool in this box. Use the following format to specify the resource pool:

/Pool-A/Pool-B/.../Pool<n>

Here, Pool<n> is the target resource pool, Pool-A is the child of the root resource pool, Pool-B is the child of Pool-A, and so on. This format allows you to specify a resource pool at any arbitrary depth within the hierarchy. To allocate the virtual machine to the root resource pool, type the “/” character.

Note the following:

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If you do not specify any resource pool, the virtual machine is allocated to its original resource pool (as at the time of backup).

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If you specify an invalid or inaccessible resource pool, the plug-in follows the path hierarchy backwards to find a valid resource pool. It allocates the virtual machine to the first valid ancestor pool in the path and logs an error message.

Perform COS-Less Restore

(Legacy backups only)

For savesets created with Plug‑in for VMware 1.x, the Perform COS-Less Restore check box must be selected to specify an alternate datastore or resource pool. If you do not select this check box, the plug-in ignores the settings for the Relocate to Alternate Datastore and Allocate to Different Resource Pool options for such savesets.

NOTE: This additional check box is only available to legacy backups created with Plug‑in for VMware 1.x. The plug-in no longer supports the COS-based and COS‑less restore types. The later versions of the plug-in ignore this option during a restore.

Click Save to save the settings, and then click Next.

In Job Name, specify a name for the job.

Assign a descriptive name that allows you to easily identify the job for monitoring its progress. The job name can contain alphanumeric and non-alphanumeric characters, but it cannot contain non-Latin characters. There is no length restriction. However, a maximum of 40 characters is recommended on all platforms

In the Target Client list, the client from which data was backed up is selected by default. Do not change this setting.

Select or create the Schedule Set, Restore Source Set, and Advanced Options Set. For more information about these sets, see the Dell NetVault Backup Administrator’s Guide.

Click Submit to submit the job for scheduling.

You can monitor the job progress from the Job Status page and view the logs from the View Logs page. For more information about these functions, see the Dell NetVault Backup Administrator’s Guide.

Important notes

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If you select the virtual machine node, or select the virtual machine node and exclude one or more virtual disks, the plug-in creates a virtual machine and restores the contents of the selected disks.

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If you select one or more virtual disks instead of the virtual machine, the plug-in overwrites the contents of the existing “.vmdk” file. If the “.vmdk” file is not available on the vCenter Server, the plug-in reports an error.

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While restoring one or more virtual disks to an existing virtual machine, the plug-in tries to locate the virtual machine using its UUID. If the plug-in finds more than one virtual machine sharing the UUID, the following error message is logged and the job fails:

Failed to uniquely locate VM in server inventory because its uuid 'xxxx' is in use by one or more other VMs.

When this error occurs, you must change the UUID for the virtual machines in the inventory so that each virtual machine has a unique UUID. You can use the following procedure to locate virtual machines that use the same UUID.

To find virtual machines that share a UUID

Open a browser window, and in the address bar, type the following URL.

https://<server_address>/mob/?moid=SearchIndex&method=findAllByUuid

Provide the login information for the server.

(<server_address> must be the address of the target vCenter or ESXi Server on which you want to restore the virtual disks.)

In the uuid box, type the UUID for the virtual machine that you want to restore.

In the vmSearch box, type true.

Leave the remaining options blank and start the search.

The virtual machines that share the given UUID are displayed in the val list. Click the link for managed object reference of each virtual machine to view the name and other details.

Change the UUID so that each virtual machine has a unique UUID. For more information about this procedure, see the relevant VMware documentation.