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November 6th, 2017 05:00

Restoring from snapshot question Vcenter

Hi Community, 

I've done some digging but can't seem to find the answer I'm looking for. 

We currently are taking snapshots on the EQL every 60 mins. If I wanted to restore to a snapshot on the EQL with the the volume connected to Vcenter, what is the best step by step process to restore a volume with vms running on it? 

4 Operator

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2.3K Posts

November 6th, 2017 05:00

Well... it depends on what an how you doing the snapshot (smart copy/clone).

1. If you have integrated VSM (the old ASM/VE) it gives the possibility to create a snapshot of a single VM through the vSphere Client/WebClient GUI. At the backend the EQL creates a snapshot of the entire volume where the VM is located on. Always the entire volume is snapshoted.

On that way a more quescied snapshot is possible because VSM triggers also a vSphere Snapshot if you like.

An Restore is possible through the vSphere/WebClient GUI!. For us it takes a long time for large VMs because the EQL copy the complete volume  around.

2.  Simple Snapshot based on a collection configured and managed by EQL GroupManager.

All selected Volumes. No Quiescing.

For an "restore" you promote a Snap temporary to an ESXi Host. You have to tell the ESXi to mount this Volume with the help of the command line because ESXi detects the Volume as an existing datastore (same signature). If you allowed it creates automaticly an " -snapshot" Datastore in which you can browse around. You have to add VMs back to the vCenter inventory or just add additionals vDisk to an existing[1] VM.

[1] Dont add the "same" vDisk twice to a VM. Choose always a similar and copy files over the network if needed

We use option 2... but you need some practice and a roadbook. If you do it the first time you will be lost until you find "esxcfg-volume -l" :)

Regards,
Joerg

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