5 1 0:Hyper-V Restore

Overview

SEP sesam enables you to restore individual VMs that were backed up from a Hyper-V standalone server or a Hyper-V cluster. Only one VM can be restored at a time, regardless of whether you are using a Hyper-V standalone server or a Hyper-V cluster backup.

Key features

• The restore of Hyper-V VMs is similar to regular file system restore. Note that you can only restore one VM at a time.

• Scheduling restore is supported only through the GUI (it is not possible to schedule restores in the Web UI). For details, see Scheduling Restore.

Single file restore (SFR)

• SEP sesam now uses Resilient Change Tracking (RCT) by default for Hyper-V backups on Windows Server ≥ 2016 (Hyper-V VM ≥ 6.2). SFR in v. ≥ SEP sesam 5.0.0 Jaglion is currently only supported for VM Hyper-V backups without RCT option (old approach with VSS snapshots creating .avhdx files instead of the new Resilient Change Tracking). The mount option is not shown for new RCT backups with the attribute 'RCT'.

• Single file restore (SFR) is supported only in advanced UI mode.

	Note
	In case a Windows Explorer window is opened for every mounted VHDX during mounting of a Hyper-V RCT backup, disable Autoplay option or set the option Take no action as default for removable drives.

Restore options

The following options are available when restoring Hyper-V:

• Restore a backed up VM or perform single file restore (via mount) from a FULL, COPY or INCR backup of Hyper-V VM.
• Select a specific Hyper-V version for restore.
• Select a complete, generation or as path restore.
• Select an alternative location to restore your data:
  • restore a VM to the original or a different location (including CSV and SMB 3.0) with the same or a different VM name using relocation
  • restore a VM to the same or a different Hyper-V standalone server and to the same or a different Hyper-V cluster
  • perform a simple path restore of your selected Hyper-V data directly to a directory on any system instead of restoring and importing the VM to the Hyper-V manager
• If you are performing a standard VM restore you can also select whether you want your virtual machine to start automatically after restore.
• Schedule a restore task.

Prerequisites

Before you perform Hyper-V restore, check the following prerequisites:

• To successfully restore a Hyper-V backup, all preparation steps must be performed properly. For details, see Hyper-V Backup.
• Depending on what you want to restore, make sure that you have the proper restore permissions and access rights. For details, see User Roles and Permissions.
• Make sure that there is sufficient free space on the target system to which you are restoring your data; by default, the target data store for restore is the same data store that was used for the backup.
• During restore, it is recommended that you stop all activities on the target.

Restoring a Hyper-V virtual machine

You can access the Restore Assistant in one of the following ways:

• via the GUI: by clicking the Restore Assistant icon in the toolbar or from Activities -> Restore Assistant
• from SEP sesam Web UI: left menu -> Restore Assistant
• or by entering the following address in the browser bar: http://[sesamserver]:11401/sep/ui/restore/.

Note

If you cannot access the web Restore Assistant, check that you have been given the appropriate permissions for online restore. The operations and options available after logging in may differ depending on the user type. Other Web UI display restrictions may depend on the custom roles with specific permissions and the UI mode. For details, see About Authentication and Authorization and User Roles and Permissions.

The following steps are performed in simple UI mode. They cover the most common restore cases and are the recommended method for performing a restore. For more experienced users, some additional restore options are available in advanced restore mode. For details, see Standard Restore Procedure.

1. Open the Restore Assistant in the browser.
2. In the start window, select Microsoft Hyper-V and click Next.


3. In the Virtual Machine window, under Selection of the server, select your Hyper-V server/cluster to restore your data to.
   Then, under Selection of the virtual machine select the VM you want to restore and click Next.


4. In the Task window, under Task selection, select your source backup task.
   Under Backup selection, select the exact backup version you want to restore. Note that Generation restore is selected by default. You can use the calendar function in the upper right corner to set a date range for the displayed backups.
   Click Next.


5. In the Target window, under the Target selection select your target environment for restore. You can use the drop-down list to select or filter VMs by name. You can create a new VM by entering a new name in the Virtual machine field.
Then set additional restore options under Execution options:
Do not overwrite an existing virtual machine: The VM is restored only if it does not already exist on the target system.
Overwrite an existing virtual machine: If the VM exists on the target server, it will be replaced with the restored version.
Click Next.


6. Modify or set additional restore options under the Virtualization restore options:
Recovery options: Specify whether or not to start the VM after restore.
Clustering options: Only shown if you are restoring a VM that is part of a cluster. Specify whether the VM should be added to the cluster.
Under Target options of the virtual machine you can select the default Hyper-V folder for virtual machines to restore only the disks to the specified target path. Click Next.

7. In the last step, check the summary of your restore task (restore type (based on task type, selected backup, its date and details, restore options, etc.) and click Start restore.

Restoring single files (SFR)

SEP sesam enables single file restore (SFR) – item-level restore of files, folders, and volumes from a COPY, FULL or INCR backup of Hyper-V virtual machine by mounting VHDX on a device server and browsing the content of a virtual disk file.

Restrictions

Note

SEP sesam uses Resilient Change Tracking (RCT) by default for Hyper-V backups on Windows Server ≥ 2016 (Hyper-V VM ≥ 6.2). SFR (VFS mount) is currently only supported for VM Hyper-V backups without RCT option (old approach with VSS snapshots creating .avhdx files instead of the new Resilient Change Tracking). The new RCT backups have a 'RCT' attribute and the mount option is not shown. For older backups without the 'RCT' attribute, the mount option is available.

Before starting the restore, check the general mount restrictions. Note that the following additional restrictions apply to mounting and SFR on Hyper-V:

• You can only restore a single file on a Windows Server/RDS since you need PowerShell to execute it.
• You can only mount Windows VMs due to the underlying file system.
• You can only restore a single file if you use the same SEP sesam version that was used for the backup. If you have performed a Hyper-V VM backup with v. 4.4.3 Beefalo V2, you cannot perform a single file restore with v. 5.0.0 Jaglion.

Single file restore (SFR) via the Restore Assistant

With v. 5.0.0 Jaglion, you can restore individual files of a Hyper-V VM in the web interface in advanced UI mode if you have the appropriate permissions. For more details on UI mode, see Setting UI mode in the Restore Assistant.

1. Open the Restore Assistant in the browser.
2. In the Start window, select Hyper-V. Then select the option Advanced View. The VM or single file restore option is selected by default. Click Next.


3. In the Virtual Machine window, under Selection of the server, select your target Hyper-V server to which the data will be restored.
Then, under Selection of the virtual machine, select the VM that you want to restore and click Next.


4. In the Task window, under Task selection, select your source task. A backup task defines the source data that was backed up by the client.
Then, under Backup selection, select the exact backup version you want to restore. You can use the calendar function in the upper right corner to set a date range for the backups. Select the Single file restore option (in the lower right corner) and click Next.


5. In the Files window, select the SEP sesam Server or RDS to which you want to mount the backup. You can also specify an alternate mount path and/or advanced mount options. Then click the button Mount this backup in filesystem. A new window will appear showing the progress of the mount process.

Note

Mounting Hyper-V image files is not supported on Linux platform. Hyper-V disks can only be mounted on Windows systems. See above restrictions. Mounting is not possible if the savesets are stored on tapes or if the data is compressed or encrypted. Some other XPRFS restrictions also apply to mounting. As SFR is currently only supported for Hyper-V VM backups without the RCT option (old approach with VSS snapshots creating .avhdx files instead of the new Resilient Change Tracking – RCT), the mount option is currently not available for the new RCT backups with a 'RCT' attribute.




6. Once a virtual disk is mounted on the device server, select the files or folders you want to restore and click Next.

7. In the Target window, under Target selection, select your target environment for the restore. You can use the drop-down list to select or filter VMs by name. You can also select a custom target path by browsing.
Under the Execution options, set additional restore options:
Do not overwrite existing items: Files are only restored if they do not already exist on the target system.
Overwrite existing items: If the data exists on the target server, it is replaced with the restored version.
Then decide how you want to restore your data (keep the original tree structure or flat):
Keep original tree structure: When restoring to the original location, the Keep original tree structure option is selected by default. The directory structure of the restored files is the same as the original directory structure of the backed up data.
Restore all items flat in the selected target directory: The backup is simply restored to a file without recreating the directory structure.
You can also select to skip ACL settings during restore.

Click Next.
8. In the Options window, you can specify additional advanced options, such as selecting a data source (media pool, drive, etc.), set include/exclude filters, etc. For details on the available options, see Standard Restore Procedure.

Click Next.

9. In the last step, check the summary of your restore task (restore type (based on task type, selected backup, its date and details, restore options, etc.) and click Start restore.

Monitoring restore

You can monitor the restore progress using the Web UI (Monitoring -> Restores) or view the status in the GUI (Main Selection -> Job State -> Restores). The restore overview provides detailed information on the last run of restore jobs, including task name, status (successful, error, in queue...), start and stop time of the last backup, data size, throughput, etc. For details, see SEP sesam Web UI.

See also

Online Restore Assistant – Hyper-V Backup – Cross-Platform Recovery File System Layer

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