Backup to VMWare Workstation 8

[prs246191]

Is it possible to take a backup of a physical server that I have in my production environment and restore it to a vm, enabling me to make a lab (test) Enviroment?  I am running BE 2012 with all of the agents available and I would like to restore the machine to vmware workstation 8. Please let me know if you need any further details.

[CraigV]

hI,

Probably only on a file level if you do the following:

1. Backup everything on the physical server.

2. Create a VM in VMware Workstation 8, and load the BE Remote Agent on it.

3. Restore all the files from backup to this newly created VM.

Other than that, there is no way to do a P2V of the physical server onto Workstation as there is no support for it in Backup Exec.

Thanks!

[prs246191]

So when you say only on the file level should I take it as not the system state...  Basically I am trying to replicate my Primary DC in a test enviroment...  If this isn't posible would it be possible to replicate it back out as a Hyper V server within a 2012 Server within my VMWare Workstation? 

[CraigV]

Yes, sorry, forgot to include the System State...VMware Workstation isn't supported by BE at all. Whether or not it is supported by Hyper-V is another story, and I'd recommend asking this part of your query on the MS forums.

Thanks!

[pkh]

a Hyper V server within a 2012 Server within my VMWare Workstation

You cannot run a hypervisor as a VM.

[pkh · Accepted solution]

You cannot simply recover your server in a VM or any other physical machine for that matter.  It would probably fail to boot due to incompatible or missing drivers.

What you can do is to use SDR to restore the server to either a VM or another physical machine.  SDR will allow you to install the necessary drivers during the restore so that the restored machine is functioning machine.  For more details on SDR, read the SDR chapter in the Admin Guide.  There is also a video on SDR recovery in the Video section.

If you have a physical Hyper-V host which is licenced for the Hyper-V agent licence, then you do a B2V restore of your physical machine to a Hyper-V VM.  For more details, read the Hyper-V chapter in the Admin Guide.

As previously advised, VMware Workstation is not supported.

[Colin_Weaver]

To use the P2V/B2V (Physical to Virtual/Backup to Virtual) capability within Backup Exec, the target MUST be either Hyper-V or VMware ESXi (licensed for vStorage backup APIs)  Unfortunataley none of the versions of Vmware Workstation are supported for B2V (or P2V) as they do not have the same backup API that ESXi provides

You might be able to do it semi manually (as mentioned by pkh)  by using SDR to recover the physical system into an empty virtual system inside Vmware workstation