Recovering a Virtual Machine from a Backup

Note: The virtual machine (VM) backup and recovery feature is a Technology Preview only and is under development for potential availability in a future release. Access to the feature requires a separate license and is disabled by default. The feature is not supported nor intended for use in production environments. Contact your authorized service provider for more information.

Recover a VM to recover a backup of the VM from a network-mounted folder or from a USB device. Recovering a VM from a backup that was created on the ztC Edge system as described in Backing Up a Running Virtual Machine creates a new, duplicate VM on the same ztC Edge system or on another system. (Alternatively, you can import or restore a VM to a system from standard Open Virtualization Format (OVF) and Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) files, as described in Importing an OVF or OVA File and Replacing/Restoring a Virtual Machine from an OVF File.)

Recovering a VM creates an identical VM with the same SMBIOS UUID, system serial number, and MAC addresses, if provided in the VM backup, that your guest operating system and applications may require for software licensing. The hardware ID, though, of the recovered VM is unique.

You can recover a VM only if you have previously backed up the VM (as described in Backing Up a Running Virtual Machine) from a ztC Edge system to files on a supported network share or a USB device. Mount the USB device or network share on the target ztC Edge system as described in Mounting a USB Device or Network-mounted Folder on the ztC Edge System, and then use the ztC Edge Console on the target ztC Edge system to recover the Extensible Markup Language (XML) and raw hard disk data files.

Notes:

You can recover a VM only from backup files created with the Backup feature on a ztC Edge system. You cannot recover a VM from backup files created on a third-party system. If needed you can import OVF and VHD files that have been exported from a third-party system.
When recovering a VM, the system attempts to preserve the hardware ID and MAC addresses of all network interfaces.
Recover a VM only if you are specifically trying to recover a particular instance of a ztC Edge VM and the recovered VM will be the only copy of this VM running across all ztC Edge servers in your network.

The time required to recover a VM depends on the size and number of volumes in the source VM as well as network bandwidth. For example, transferring a VM with one 20 GB boot volume over a 1Gb network may take about 30 minutes.
If the ztC Edge system switches from the primary PM to the secondary PM while recovering a VM, the recovery process fails. This does not affect the continuous uptime of your system, but you must delete the incomplete VM and associated volumes on the ztC Edge system, and recover them again.

Prerequisites:

Before you recover a VM from a ztC Edge system, use the ztC Edge Console on the source ztC Edge system to back up the VM to a supported network share or a USB device. Mount the USB device or network share on the target ztC Edge system as described in Mounting a USB Device or Network-mounted Folder on the ztC Edge System, and then use the ztC Edge Console on the target ztC Edge system to recover the VM.
Both PMs of the ztC Edge system must be online for the recover process to function properly.

To recover a VM

Log on to the ztC Edge Console on the target ztC Edge system.
On the Physical Machines page (see the Physical Machines Page) of a system configured with two nodes, verify that both PMs are in the running state and that neither PM is in maintenance mode or in the process of synchronizing.
Mount the USB device or network share on the ztC Edge system as described in Mounting a USB Device or Network-mounted Folder on the ztC Edge System.
On the Virtual Machines page (see Virtual Machines Page), select the VM that you want to recover in the upper panel.
Click Import/Restore/Recover to open the Import/Restore/Recover Virtual Machine Wizard.
Select Recover, and then click Next.
Select one of the following:
- Recover from USB—Recovers the VM from a USB device mounted on the ztC Edge system.
  
  Click Next and then select a partition from the pull-down menu. Click List backup files and select the appropriate file from the pull-down menu. You can optionally search for a file by entering the file name or partial file name in the Search Files box. The box lists backup files that have names matching the name entered in the box, and that reside in various directories:
  - With the parent (root) directory as the search directory, the listed files reside in sub-directories in addition to the parent (root) directory.
  - With a sub-directory as the search directory, the listed files reside in the parent (root) directory in addition to the sub-directory.
- Recover from remote/network Windows Share(CIFS/SMB)—Recovers the VM from a Windows share on your local network.
  
  Click Next and enter values for Username and Password. For Repository, enter a value in the format \\machine_URL\ShareName (for example, \\192.168.1.34\MyOVFsForImport). Then, click List backup files and select the appropriate backup file from the list.
- Recover from remote/network NFS—Recovers the VM from an NFS share on your local network.
  
  Click Next and for Repository, enter the URL of the remote system in the format nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn/folder_name (do not include http:// or https://).
  
  Click List backup files to display a list of all files in the remote folder. Select the appropriate backup file. You can optionally search for a file by entering the file name or partial file name in the Search Files box, or you can reorganize the list by clicking a column heading (Name, Date Modified, or Size). Click the file name to select the file.
When you finish selecting a backup file, click Next to continue.
Select the Protection Level to use for the VM:
- Fault Tolerant (FT)
- High Availability (HA)
- Unprotected (NONE)
For information about these levels of protection, see Creating a New Virtual Machine and Modes of Operation.
Click Recover to begin recovering the VM.

You can monitor the Recovery Status in the Summary tab for the VM that you are recovering. When the process is complete, the status changes to Recovery completed successfully.

Note: Recovered volumes begin to appear on the Volumes page of the ztC Edge Console while the recovery process is still in progress. Do not attach or remove any of these recovered volumes until the recovery is complete; otherwise, the recovery process fails.
If applicable, use the Reprovision Virtual Machine wizard to allocate additional resources to the VM, as described in Reprovisioning Virtual Machine Resources.

When you are finished reprovisioning the VM, click Start to boot the VM.

After you verify that the recovered VM is functioning properly, the recovery process is complete; however, the ztC Edge system may continue to synchronize data between PMs to enable High Availability (HA) or Fault Tolerant (FT) operation.

Note: Your recovered VM and its associated volumes may be marked with warning symbols until the data has been synchronized and the VirtIO drivers are running.

Recovering a Virtual Machine from a Backup

To clean up after a canceled or failed recovery process

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