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Full VM Recovery

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With Veeam Backup & Replication, you can restore an entire VM from a backup file to the latest state or to any good-to-know point in time if the primary VM fails.

In contrast to instant VM recovery, full VM restore requires you to fully extract the VM image to the production storage. Though full VM restore takes more resources and time to complete, you do not need to perform extra steps to finalize the recovery process. Veeam Backup & Replication pulls the VM data from the backup repository to the selected storage, registers the VM on the chosen ESX host and, if necessary, powers it on. Full VM recovery enables full disk I/O performance while Instant VM recovery provides a “temporary spare” for a VM as the vPower NFS throughput is limited.

To perform full VM recovery, Veeam Backup & Replication uses one of the following transport modes:

If the backup proxy is connected directly into the SAN fabric or has access to NFS datastores, Veeam Backup & Replication uses the Direct storage access transport mode. Veeam Data Mover Services deployed on the backup repository and backup proxy retrieve VM data from the backup file and put it directly to the necessary datastore.

Veeam Backup & Replication can restore only thick VM disks using the Direct storage access transport mode. For thin VM disks restore, Veeam Backup & Replication will use the Virtual appliance or Network transport modes. Alternatively, you can instruct Veeam Backup & Replication to restore VM disks as thick.

If the backup proxy is virtualized and resides on the ESX(i) host to which the VM must be restored, Veeam Backup & Replication uses the Virtual appliance transport mode. The Virtual appliance mode utilizes VMware ESX(i) capabilities of HotAdding disks to the VM and thus eliminates the need to transfer the backup data across the network. Veeam Data Mover Services deployed on the backup repository and backup proxy retrieve VM data from the backup file and put it directly to the necessary datastore via the ESX(i) I/O stack.
If the Direct storage access and Virtual appliance transport modes cannot be used, Veeam Backup & Replication uses the Network transport mode.

For more information, see Transport Modes.

A VM can be restored to its original location or to a new location. When you restore a VM to its original location, the primary VM is automatically turned off and deleted before the restore. This type of restore ensures the quickest recovery and minimizes the number of mistakes which can be potentially caused by changes in VM settings.

When you restore a VM to a new location, you need to specify new VM settings such as the new VM name, the host and datastore where the VM will reside, disk format (thin or thick provisioned) and network properties. Veeam Backup & Replication will change the VM configuration file and store the VM data to the location of your choice.