Recover VMware virtual machines

Updated: August 24, 2016

This topic explains how to use DPM to restore VMware VMrecovery points. For an overview on using DPM to recover data, see Recover protected data. In the DPM Administrator Console, there are two ways to find recoverable data - search or browse. When recovering data, you may, or may not want to restore data or a VM to the same location. For this reason DPM supports three recovery options for VMware VM backups.

• Original location recovery (OLR) - Use OLR to restore a protected VM to its original location. You can restore a VM to its original location only if no disks have been added or deleted, since the back up occurred. If disks have been added or deleted, you must use alternate location recovery.

• Alternate location recovery (ALR) - When the original VM is missing, or you don't want to disturb the original VM, you can recover the VM to an alternate location. To recover a VM to an alternate location, you must provide the location of an ESXi host, resource pool, folder, and the storage datastore and path. Once the VM has been restored, to help differentiate the restored VM from the original VM, DPM appends "-Recovered" to the name of the VM.

• Individual file location recovery (ILR) - If the protected VM is a Windows Server VM, individual files/folders inside the VM can be recovered using DPM’s ILR capability. To recover individual files, see the procedure later in this topic.

To identify what you want to restore, you can search for, or browse for a recovery point.

1. In the DPM Administrator Console, click Recovery view.

2. Using the Browse pane, browse or filter to find the VM you want to recover.

   Once you select a VM or folder, the Recovery points for pane displays the available recovery points.

   

3. In the Recovery points for field, use the calendar and drop-down menus to select a date when a recovery point was taken.

   Calendar dates in bold have available recovery points.

4. On the tool ribbon, click Recover to open the Recovery Wizard.

   

5. Click Next to advance to the Specify Recovery Options screen.

6. On the Specify Recovery Options screen, if you want to enable network bandwidth throttling, click Modify. To leave network throttling disabled, click Next. No other options on this wizard screen are available for VMware VMs.

   If you choose to modify the network bandwidth throttle, in the Throttle dialog, select Enable network bandwidth usage throttling to turn it on. Once enabled, configure the Settings and Work Schedule.

7. On the Select Recovery Type screen, choose whether to recover to the original instance, or to a new location, and click Next.

   

   • If you choose Recover to original instance, you don't need to make any more choices in the wizard. The data for the original instance is used.

   • If you choose Recover as virtual machine on any host, then on the Specify Destination screen, provide the information for ESXi Host, Resource Pool, Folder, and Path.

8. On the Summary screen, review your settings and click Recover to start the recovery process.

   The Recovery status screen shows the progression of the recovery operation.

With Update Rollup 11, you can restore individual files from a protected VM recovery point. Note that this feature is only available for Windows Server VMs. Restoring individual files is similar to restoring the entire VM, except you browse into the VMDK and find the file(s) you want, before starting the recovery process. To recover an individual file or select files from a Windows Server VM:

1. In the DPM Administrator Console, click Recovery view.

2. Using the Browse pane, browse or filter to find the VM you want to recover.

   Once you select a VM or folder, the Recovery points for pane displays the available recovery points.

   

3. In the Recovery Points for: pane, use the calendar to select the date that contains the desired recovery point(s).

   Depending on how the backup policy has been configured, dates can have more than one recovery point. Once you've selected the day when the recovery point was taken, make sure you've chosen the correct Recovery time. If the selected date has multiple recovery points, choose your recovery point by selecting it in the Recovery time drop-down menu. Once you chose the recovery point, the list of recoverable items appears in the Path: pane.

4. To find the files you want to recover, in the Path pane, double-click the item in the Recoverable item column to open it. Select the file, files, or folders you want to recover. To select multiple items, press the Ctrl key while selecting each item.

   The Path pane has a search box that can search the list of files or folders appearing in the Recoverable Item column. Search list below will not search into subfolders. To look through sub-folders, double-click the folder to go into it. Use the Up button to move from a child folder into the parent folder. You can select multiple items (files and folders), but they must be in the same parent folder. You cannot recover items from multiple folders in the same recovery job.

5. When you have selected the item(s) for recovery, in the Administrator Console tool ribbon, click Recover to open the Recovery Wizard.

   In the Recovery Wizard, the Review Recovery Selection screen shows the selected items to be recovered.

   

6. On the Specify Recovery Options screen, if you want to enable network bandwidth throttling, click Modify. To leave network throttling disabled, click Next. No other options on this wizard screen are available for VMware VMs.

   If you choose to modify the network bandwidth throttle, in the Throttle dialog, select Enable network bandwidth usage throttling to turn it on. Once enabled, configure the Settings and Work Schedule.

7. On the Select Recovery Type screen, click Next. You can only recover your file(s) or folder(s) to a network folder.

8. On the Specify Destination screen, click Browse to find a network location for your files or folders.

   

   Note that DPM creates a folder where all recovered items will be copied. The folder name has the prefix, DPM_day-month-year. When you select a location for the recovered files or folder, the details about that location (Destination, Destination path, and available space) are provided.

9. On the Specify Recovery Options screen, choose which security setting to apply. You can opt to modify the network bandwidth usage throttling, but the defautlt is throttling is disabled.

   SAN Recovery and Notification are not enabled.

10. On the Summary screen, review your settings and click Recover to start the recovery process.

    The Recovery status screen shows the progression of the recovery operation.