Restoring Data Using VMware Backups

If protected objects data at the production end is damaged or lost, and needs to be restored, the eBackup management system can restore the backup data to the production end using the backups generated at specific points in time.

Restore Constraints

Pay attention to the following constraints before restoring VMware VMs:

When data on a VMware VM is restored in LAN-free (SAN transport) mode, if the VM is installed with lazy zeroed disks, its data will be restored in LAN-base (NBD or NBDSSL) mode.
Backup data of a VM in a later VMware vSphere version cannot be restored to a VM in an earlier VMware vSphere version.
During data restoration, the eBackup management system automatically shuts down the VM to be restored and the VM cannot be started. Or, the restoration fails or the restored data is incorrect.
During VM disk restoration, if multiple disks on the source VM have undergone volume management (such as logical volume management on Linux OS or dynamic volume management on Windows OS) and only some disks are restored, data on these disks cannot be accessed.
A dynamic disk group must be restored to the target VM at a time. Backup images of a dynamic disk group cannot be mounted to a VM for many times. The backup images to be restored of a dynamic disk group cannot be mounted to the source VM.
In the following scenarios, the disk space to which no backup data is written will not be zeroed and reclaimed:
- Incremental restoration. Backup data is written to the original disk.
- Full restoration. Backup data is written to the original disk.