VMware data recovery

VMware is a virtualisation whereby a number of Virtual Machines (VM) can run on one server. The advantages are that each VM can run it’s own Operating System (OS). Otherwise, they share the same resources such as networking and RAM.

VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) is a disaster recovery product that is executed automatically in the case of a failure. SRM shuts down virtual machines and synchronises the data storage between the protected site and recovery site. Disaster recovery shouldn’t be confused with data recovery. Disaster recovery refers to the plan and processes for quickly re-establishing access to data.

VMware Data Recovery uses a VSphere Client plugin in conjunction with a backup storage device such as a hard disk(s). Before starting any Data Recovery, the installation process has to be completed, ensuring that the Data Recovery system requirements are met.
To configure Data Recovery, the backup appliance should be connected to vCenter Server and backup configurations specified. Using the Virtual Machine Restore Wizard, the user specifies which virtual machines to restore to and how the data is to be restored.

Data Recovery provides means to test how a virtual machine would be restored and to actually carry out restore operations. Restore rehearsals create virtual machines from restore points. Virtual machines from restore rehearsals do not replace current virtual machines, but virtual machines create through restore rehearsals do provide a way to ensure that virtual machine backups are being created as expected and that they can be successfully restored.

Actually restoring virtual machines returns specified virtual machines to a selected previous state. For both restore rehearsals and restores, the Restore Virtual Machines wizard provides pages that allow you to configure from where and to where virtual machines are restored.

Further reading

VMware Data Recovery Administrators Guide

Redundancy and RAID 10

Synology NAS that’s not responding