Quick Ways to Recover Data from Virtual Machine After Disaster

In this blog, we will discuss the practical guide to Virtual Disaster Recovery. The various guidelines are also mentioned.

Overview of Disaster Recovery

Generally, we take back up of the crucial data because in the case of the original data is accidentally deleted or damaged. Due to such failures, the data is needed to be stored and the working conditions should be maintained, this is referred to as disaster recovery. The disaster recovery can be performed only if you have taken the backup of data.

Virtual Disaster Recovery

Nowadays, the virtualization is becoming very popular. In the virtual disaster recovery process, the recovery of data is done by duplicating images of virtual machines (VM) in place of physical servers and recreating these at any other location. There are three types of VM backup that you can take image-based, agent-based, and server-less backup. This duplication of data assists to conduct the work smoothly. Also, work process flows independently between VMs and reach quickly after recovery. So, there is no need of manual re-launching for the operating system and physical server.

Now have a look at steps implemented in Virtual Disaster Recovery –

The targets on which the virtual disaster recovery is implemented are as follows:

• VMware vSphere/VMware ESXi version 4.1, 5.0, 5.1, 5.5 and 6.0
• Hyper-V versions 2 and 3

It can support the VMware are Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 / 8.1, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 operating systems.
In the case of Hyper-V, it supports Windows 8 / 8.1, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2.

How to Take Backup for Virtual Disaster Recovery

Follow the following steps for taking backup for the Virtual Disaster Recovery feature –

• Get the System State data source backup of your system. Initialize from version 15.10 and back up a system which consists of dynamic disks. At the time of recovery dynamic disks will be transformed to basic disks.
• Take the Backup of the complete system disk C:\ or you can do according to your system configuration (the Files and Folders data source).
• Also, take the backup of crucial data if required. It supports data sources like Files and Folders, MS Exchange and MS SQL.

Software Used for Virtual Disaster Recovery

Virtual disaster recovery can be done on Backup Manager and Recovery    Console tools.

In Backup Manager, you recover data from one device whereas in
Recovery Console you can recover data from multiple devices in a single time.
These tools support one-time and continuous restores. The Backup Manager can only do continuous when the device is in restore-only mode.

Guidelines for Virtual Disaster Recovery

For Backup Manager

• First, start the Backup Manager.
• Click on Restore >> Virtual Disaster Recovery.
• Choose the virtual machine type to recover the data.
• Mention the settings for the selected virtual machine.
• Click on Restore to initiate a recovery process.

Wait for the completion of the recovery process.

For Recovery Console

• First, start the Recovery Console.
• Select a device and click on Configure.
• Select “Virtual disaster recovery” from the list of data sources.
• Choose the type of Virtual Machine to recover your system from the Restore target list.
• Fill the settings for the selected virtual machine and click on OK.

Click on Yes to continue or click on No to add device without recovering data.

Notes on MS Exchange and MS SQL

If you include MS Exchange and MS SQL in a virtual disaster recovery, the automatic data resources’ recovery will be done after the launch of a new virtual machine.

If MS Active Directory is detachable, then the system will restart. In the case of remote ESXi servers, Virtual Machines start automatically. On the other hand, Hyper-V machines need a manual restart.

Realted Post