VMDK files restore.

[NBU35]

Hi

I am trying to restore vmdk files from backup that we have.

I am finding a strange problem here, We have full backup on30 july and after that we have all incremental backups.

I have to restore it to today's date. But If i try to select last full backup and all diffrential backup, it is not allowing me, at a time I am only able to select one backup from one date.

I am trying to restore from bakcup proxy hosts, BAR Panel.

Please suggest on this.

[Marianne]

Seems that is not possible.

Extract from NBU for VMware manual:

Restoring the full VMware virtual machine

If the VMware backup was made with both of the following, you can restore the

entire virtual machine:

■ A FlashBackup-Windows policy.

■ The Virtual Machine Backup parameter was set to any of the following:

   ■ Full VM backup

   ■ Mapped fullVMbackup

   ■ Full backup with file level incremental, and the policy schedule was a full backup type.

More detail is available on restore options.

See “Recovery options related to policy selections” on page 66.

See Table 5-1:  Recovery features with vStorage

[NBU35]

Polikcy type is A FlashBackup-Windows policy. and Virtual Machine Backup parameter is Mapped fullVMbackup in this case. If I understood correctly it is not possible to choose all diffrential and full collectively for restore. ? If yes, then if have to restore up to today's date then what should be the right procedure. Please advise on it.

[Marianne]

Have you had a look at Recovery Options on page 66?

Mapped full VM backup ''Can recover virtual machine" from Incremental schedule is possible, but 'BLIB is required'.  Have you checked/verified this before Incremental schedules were added to the policy?

Without BLIB, seems your only option is to follow up Full vmdk restore with individual file restore from Incrementals. This requires agent to be installed in VM.

Not 100% sure about my last statement  - hopefully one of our VM experts will respond....

[NBU35]

Perfrom BLIB is checked in the policy. and its is NBU 7.1.0.2.

[NBU35]

Please suggest me in this case how can i recover my VM till yesterday. Will it work in following way If i restore vmdk file from full backup and then from difrentail backups sequentially on same datastore, will it be able to help me recover Vm till yesterday. Please advise on it.

[Jryankee]

Ensure you have virtual machine as your backup type selected. You just select the last incremental image and perform a vmdk restore. NBU will pull the recent incrementals and the last full to perform restore. Have your tried this?

[Toddman214]

Hello all. I am having the same issue. Ive been running vm backups with daily incrementals and weekly fulls. I am NOT using BLIB. I have two vm's that need to be restored back to their status as of a few days ago. In the BAR, I set all of my criteria, and if I select "restore from virtual machine backup", I can only see the weekly fulls (which I expected). If I change to "restore from normal backup", I see the weekly fulls, AND all subsequent daily incrementals, which again, I expected to see. Its not that I have run into any issues performing a restore.....I just simply do not know how to do it. Do I run through a typical VMDK restore for the weekly full using the  "restore from virtual machine backup" option, and then somehow start another restore using the "restore from normal backup" option to add back the needed daily incrementals??  This is the part that is confusing me. :(  

[Yasuhisa_Ishika]

Hello toddman,

You should open new thread for your own problem.

In this case, it is wrong not to enable BLIB. To recover VM from incrementals, BLIB must be enabled.

[Toddman214]

Then why does Netbackup even allow the option to NOT use blib when doing incrementals, if its impossible to restore the data? That doesnt make a lot of sense. What if I restored the full vmdk using the typical vmdk restore methods, and then restored the incremental backup using file level restore and tell it to overwrite existing files?

[Anonymous]

If you have the storage, why not just try this restore!

All be it an alternate restore to a VM with a different name.

Surely NetBackup offers this option.?

This way you can test see what happens without touching the live VM.

Just power it on without network connected.

This is the beauty of Virtualization.

[Yasuhisa_Ishika]

"if its impossible to restore the data" - NO, you can restore individual files from incrementals.
As you wrote, recover system from full backup, and restore incrementals as file lebel restore.

[Anonymous]

Netbackup 7.6 looks like will solve this once and for all. Looks a bit of a game changer.

NetBackup 7.6 also performs incremental VM backups, meaning after an initial full backup any data changes on a VM are automatically backed up and can be used for full restoration of the VM.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9230596/NetBackup_7.6_gets_tight_with_VMware

[Dangerous_Dan]

Hi Toddman,

Sorry I'm a little late to reply to this :)

the BLIB option only works on VM's which are VMX version 7 or above - this is why you have the option to disable it if you have VM's on VMX version 4.

in our customers environments we have VM's that are VMX version 4, and have done full VMDK recovery and then flipped the restore type to file level and chosen only the incrementals after the full you restored from and it worked. I always recommend first try not to overwrite critical windows files (c:\windows) as you are asking for trouble.

Hope this helps.