Cerberus Secure Backup - Restore VMware Guest OS Image

Overview

• How to get here in the Cerberus Secure Backup Web Console?
• Restoring virtual machine's Image backup
• Troubleshooting Tips
• Limitations

VMWare Backup and Restore feature is an effective solution to recover data against system crashes and to recreate a system similar to the old one. It can restore the virtual machine includes the virtual machine's state and the data includes all the files that make-up the virtual machine, including disks, memory, and other devices, such as virtual network interface cards.

How to get here in the Cerberus Secure Backup Web Console?
In the top menu, select: "Restore". It will display the "List of Backups for Restore" page. In the Action column of the (VMWare) Backup Schedule, click on the Restore icon.

Restoring virtual machines from backup

Restoring VMWare backup is a 2-step process.

1.   Restore the VMWare backup data from the backup server to a folder in the client machine.

2.    Use VSphere Client console to restore Guest OS snapshot file.

Note: Before restoring the VMWare backup from Cerberus Secure Backup, confirm that the backup contains *.vmdk files by expanding the restore tree in the restore backup page. If .vmdk file is not listed, then it could be that the backup had failed or is incomplete.

The following steps listed below show how to recover the image of the configured Guest OSes using VSphere Client Console.

1.    Restore VMWare backup data on the client machine by running the restore process through Cerberus Secure Backup client's web console. Since the data to be restore could be huge, you could alternatively restore the backup on the backup server side using Cerberus Secure Backup's Server Side Restore feature and ship the restore data to the client site.

Once you restored the backed up data, upload files to the datastore using the VSphere Client.

2.    Use the Datastore Browser to upload a file/folder from the VSphere Client machine to a datastore in the VSphere Client inventory.

Note: If you upload a disk file, vCenter Server does not recognize it as a disk.

Follow the steps mentioned below to restore the Guest OS Image using VSphere Client

a.   open the Datastore Browser. It wlll display the datastore in the inventory. Right-click the datastore which you want to restore the Guest OS and select Browse Datastore.

b.    Browse to the location to upload the file. Click the upload icon in the Datastore Browser toolbar and select Upload File or Upload Folder. The Upload Items dialog box opens.

c.    Navigate to and select the item to upload.

d.    Now the progress indicator shows the progress of the upload tasks.

e.    After Uploading the image, you have to register the image to the inventory. You can use VSphere Client console to resister the image.

Note: To retain the original name of the template, do not enter a name in the Add to Inventory wizard. vCenter Server uses the original name if the field in the wizard is left blank.

f.    Open the uploaded image folder using Browse Datastore.

g.    Select the *.vmx file and right-click and select Add to Inventory.

h.    Follow the steps in the Add to Inventory wizard to finish adding the virtual machine or template. Now new virtual machine will be created under the datastore.

Troubleshooting Tips

None

Limitations

• Restore using VSphere client is not supported for the snapshots taken from VMWare Server 2.0 version