Restore Hyper-V virtual machines

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You can restore Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs) by using several methods. You can restore an entire virtual machine, restore an entire virtual machine to an alternative location, or restore individual files from a virtual machine.

Full VM Restore

Restore an entire Hyper-V VM: Each Hyper-V VM backup is restored from the IBM Storage Protect server as a single entity. You can restore any guest operating systems that are hosted by the Hyper-V server regardless of whether the guest operating system is supported by IBM Storage Protect.
A Data Protection for Microsoft Hyper-V restore operation ensures that the same block on the production disk is restored only once. Older backup versions expire according to the IBM Storage Protect server management class policy that is associated with the virtual machine.
Restore an entire Hyper-V VM to an alternative location: You can restore a Hyper-V VM to an alternative VM name, to an alternative location on the Hyper-V host, or both. You can also restore a Hyper-V VM to a different Hyper-V host by using the Data Protection for Microsoft Hyper-V Management Console. If you must use the command line to restore a VM to a different host, you must run the restore operation from the Hyper-V host where the VM is being restored to.

Restore files with the file restore interface

Use the IBM Storage Protect file restore interface to restore one or more files with a web-based interface. File owners can search, locate, and restore files from a VM backup with minimal administrator assistance. Help desk personnel can also use the file restore interface to restore files on behalf of file owners.

For more information, see Getting started with file restore operations.

Restore files with the recovery agent

Use this restore method only if you want to run in-guest mount operations. Files are manually copied from a mounted virtual machine disk that is accessed through an Internet Small Computer Systems Interface (iSCSI) target or partition. This method requires the IBM Storage Protect recovery agent to be installed.

For more information, see Mount and file restore.

Tip: Previous versions of Data Protection for Microsoft Hyper-V delivered functionality for mounting a VM disk and restoring a file with the recovery agent. Although this function is still supported by the recovery agent, the IBM Storage Protect restore interface is the preferred method.

Instant access

A temporary VM is created for verification of the backup data, but the VM is not restored.

You can use either the data mover command-line interface, the Data Protection for Microsoft Hyper-V Management Console, or Windows PowerShell cmdlets to run instant access operations.

For more information, see the following topics: