Restore files from backed-up VMware server

Information covered

Purpose

Restore VMware data at the file level.

Description

Restore individual files/folders, irrespective of the operating system used on the virtual machine.

System Requirements

ESXi Hosts: IDrive BMR supports ESXi server versions 5.5, 6.0, 6.5, 6.7, and 7.0; we do not support free ESXi

VMs guest OS: Works for any application, file system and operating system that is supported by VMware

IDrive BMR supports the following operating systems to enable VMware file-system restores:

Microsoft Windows

Linux

BSD, Solaris

Mac

Disk Types

RAID

FAT, FAT32

ext2, ext3, ext4

UFS

HFS

Basic and Dynamic disks are supported

Mirrored RAID volumes are supported. Since there are two disks with the same data, both the VMDK images will be mounted for file restore.

NTFS

ReiserFS

UFS2

HFS+

JFS

XFS

Btrfs

Note:
  • Microsoft Windows - ReFS is not supported
  • Linux - ZFS is not supported; Linux LVM is supported, however, encrypted LVM volumes are not supported
  • BSD, Solaris - Limited support for variants of UFS, used in the following systems - SunOS, Sun X86, HP-UX, NeXTSTEP, OpenStep
  • RAID - All other types of RAID configurations are not supported; Striped volumes and split volumes are not supported

Perform a file-level restore from a backed-up virtual machine on the ESXi host

To restore individual files/folders from a backed-up virtual machine on the ESXi host,

  1. Go to the 'Restore' tab.
  2. Go to 'VMware Restore' > 'ESXi'.
  3. Select 'File restore'.


     
  4. Select the required ESXi host you want to restore.
  5. Select a VM and the required recovery point.
  6. Click 'Create Mount' to initiate the restore process.

Perform a file-level restore from a backed-up virtual machine on the vCenter server

To restore individual files/folders from a backed-up virtual machine on the vCenter server,

  1. Go to the 'Restore' tab.
  2. Go to 'VMware Restore' > 'vCenter'.
  3. Select 'File restore'.


     
  4. Select the required vCenter server you want to restore.
  5. Select an ESXi host.
  6. Select a VM and the required recovery point.
  7. Click 'Create Mount' to initiate the restore process.

Other means of recovering VMware machine data

  • Virtualization - Virtualize your backed up VMware virtual machine during a data disaster to bring down the recovery time objective (RTO) to the minimum. This is the quickest option to get immediate access to your entire system without any downtime at work.
  • System restore - Restore the entire virtual machine from your backed-up VMware server.