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  • 1.  Restore a Windows Backup images to ESXi

    Posted Jun 24, 2015 09:45 AM

    We have a VMware ESXi 5.0.x host with a major hard disk problem - the whole RAID array died (where datastore 1 resides) and needs to be swapped out. The VMware installation is on a SD-card. Once our (new) datastore is available, we need to restore our backed up windows images.

    2 questions:

    1. Is it worth installing the latest ESXi 5.5.x on our SD-card, before starting the VM restores?
    2. The servers are all 2008 R2. Some use Windows Backup and others Symantec System Recovery 2011. What's the best way of restoring the VMs to our new datastore?

    Thanks for any help on this.

    Regards, Oliver



  • 2.  RE: Restore a Windows Backup images to ESXi

    Posted Jun 24, 2015 10:05 AM

    Hello,

    Since one of the host RAID is dead ,

    as a best practice no VM will run in local disk on the host ,

    make sure you have the complete full back up on  the VM that was running on the respective datastore

    Build the raid , and back up the VM , either use the complete snapshot restore , that would have your entire VM placed, make sure you have local admin credentials for the same



  • 3.  RE: Restore a Windows Backup images to ESXi

    Posted Jun 24, 2015 10:31 AM

    What type of backups you have? Full VM backups and/or just file-level backups from inside the VMs?



  • 4.  RE: Restore a Windows Backup images to ESXi

    Posted Jun 24, 2015 10:35 AM

    Within each Windows Server (within the VM itself), we have either full Windows Backups (using the native windows backup) or full SSR images to an external NAS.

    The RAID array is dead - no more datastore available to copy the VMs. We need to restore using our backups.



  • 5.  RE: Restore a Windows Backup images to ESXi

    Posted Jun 24, 2015 11:01 AM

    Ok, I would first start putting up a temp server with Symantec System Recovery to restore the images. But that's only worth it if the images are not too old when it comes to DC/AD restore for example.

    Is there still some part of AD running on a 2nd server (physical or virtual)?

    What type of servers (e.g. Exchange, SQL/database, probably SBS etc.) do you have to restore from backup? That's because some of that might give you a hard time restoring them.



  • 6.  RE: Restore a Windows Backup images to ESXi

    Posted Jun 24, 2015 12:10 PM

    We have 1 x SBS 2011, 1 x WTS & 1 x application server (SQL). We only have the 1 physical server - the VMware host for these 3 VMs.

    What tools should I use to convert my backups to the ESXi host, once the datastore is rebuilt?



  • 7.  RE: Restore a Windows Backup images to ESXi

    Posted Jun 24, 2015 12:37 PM

    I never used SSR before but I guess there are brief tutorials on a SBS restore/disaster reovery at Symantec support pages or community.

    Would consider a VMWare converter installation to be handy for recovery.

    For the terminal server it might be better to rebuild that from scratch. The most problematic might be the application server, specifically the SQL database if you don't have any SQL backup (database backup from inside the database) but only file level backups for that.



  • 8.  RE: Restore a Windows Backup images to ESXi

    Posted Jun 24, 2015 12:41 PM

    Can VMware converter convert Windows Backup files?



  • 9.  RE: Restore a Windows Backup images to ESXi

    Posted Jun 24, 2015 01:09 PM

    I presume that the backup files for Windows Backup won't help you anyway as they contain no images but only files. You need a running Windows for restoring from the Win Backup files.