10-04-2016 03:32 AM
Hello,
We are struggling with restoring backups from a production system (backup server & vmware ESXi 5.5 hosts) to our test environment (different backup server & vmware ESXi 5.5 hosts). Our systems are physically separated for security reasons, and backups need to be transferred via external drive.
Is there any (better) recommended way to do this? The way we are doing it now seems like a LOT of work for such a basic task. We are talking about ~50 virtual servers:
I was pretty sure this was working when i tested it (long time ago), but today when we were doing restores we don't have the option to do "complete" restores. The "Convert to Virtual from point in time" only shows "System State" as option (with the "edit" button greyed out).
If we do traditional restore to overwrite the "old" restored VM's in the test environment, then we only have "Complete online restore > Active Directory, ADAM, etc" under options; no "A Microsoft Computer fully selected.." option.
10-04-2016 04:03 AM
Not sure what you mean by "Indexing task" you should be running both an inventory and a catalog when moving a disk to a new server (before you can restore.)
10-04-2016 04:25 AM
Yes, sorry. I meant Inventory & Catalog
10-04-2016 05:39 AM
OK so in that case you might be running into a limitation of the convert to virtual process because you are not attempting the convert from the server that did the backup. Note: I am not sure if this is a limitation however I doubt we have officially tested your scenario of moving the backup storage device to a different server and then trying to convert (or an instant recovery if it had been a VM backup)
Basically backing up critical SDR marked respources is a requirement of convert to virtual - however the SDR file itself is probably not the key component of the requirement for a conversion as it is more likely some kind of metadata in the catalogs on the original server (and of course you are moving the data between servers) so may not have that metadata.
As a comparitive note the .DR file is no longer the key part to DR situations where the Backup Exec server still exists (as per info in http://www.veritas.com/docs/000115832 ) as such you might find you can use an SDR process to get your machines recovered at the DR site by booting a VM with an SDR disk and using the .DR file steps in that technote - if that works it is likely the convert to virtual needs the original server.