Full VM instant restore environment requirements

The following environment requirements must exist before attempting a full VM instant restore operation:

• Full VM instant restore is supported only for IBM Spectrum Protect data mover 7.1 (or later) Windows 64-bit and Windows vStorage Backup servers.
• Instant access and instant restore capability is supported only for VMware VMs that are hosted on VMware ESXi 5.1 servers, or later versions.
• Full VM instant restore is supported only for disks and virtual tape libraries (VTL). Physical tape storage pools are not supported.
• The IBM Spectrum Protect recovery agent 7.1 (or later) must be installed on the same system as the data mover 7.1 (or later) data mover system.
• A data mover node that was used for version 7.1.0 instant restore and instant access operations cannot be used for version 8.1.8 instant restore and instant access operations. After you upgrade IBM Spectrum Protect for Virtual Environments to version 8.1.8, you must create a pair of mount proxy nodes to run instant restore and instant access operations. You can create a mount proxy node pair by using either of the following methods:
  • Go to the Configuration window in the Data Protection for VMware vSphere GUI and click Edit Configuration. Go to the Mount Proxy Node Pairs page and follow the instructions on that page.
  • Follow the steps in Manually configuring the mount proxy nodes on a remote Windows system.
• VMs that were backed up with data mover 6.3 (or later) can be restored by using full VM instant restore.
• With IBM Spectrum Protect for Virtual Environments version 8.1.8 and higher, you can use either a Windows mount proxy node or a Windows data mover node to run instant restore and instant access operations.
• The data mover system requires the IBM Spectrum Protect for Virtual Environments 7.1 (or later) license file.
• iSCSI mount (with the recovery agent) is used to expose the VM disks to the ESX as virtual RDMs. Instant access and instant restore operations require an iSCSI software or hardware adapter that is configured on the ESX host that is used for these operations.
• Storage vMotion must be installed and configured on the ESX servers that host the VMs to be used during instant restore operations. Instant access operations (that validate the VM backup data) do not require Storage vMotion.
• Instant access and instant restore operations require vSphere privileges that power on VMs (Virtualmachine.Interaction.PowerOn).