By Steve Endow
After discussing my use of Veeam for Hyper-V backups on Twitter, I was immediately met with the dreaded question all backup managers fear: “Have you tested it?”
While backups are universally understood as essential, the crucial practice of regularly testing them through actual restores often gets overlooked. I’m guilty of this myself. It’s easy to delay, especially since testing restores can feel like tempting fate, potentially disrupting live systems.
In my case, I hadn’t yet attempted a Veeam restore. Thankfully, I haven’t needed to recover any VMs, but I was also apprehensive about causing unintended consequences with a test restore.
However, after publicly endorsing Veeam and being prompted about restore testing on Twitter, I decided it was time to confront my apprehension. To my relief, restoring a VM with Veeam proved to be a non-issue, much like restoring a SQL Server backup to a test database.
Admittedly, locating the restore option took a moment. Once found, the restore wizard guided me through the process smoothly, allowing me to review and adjust options according to my needs. Impressively, the actual restore process was remarkably fast, taking less than a minute for a 100GB VHD (though only 8GB actually needed restoration).
The restore process involved these straightforward steps:
- Clicking on “Restore”
- Choosing to restore the entire VM (while noting the option for individual file recovery)
- Selecting the specific VM backup from August 17th
- Specifying a new location for the restored VM, ensuring my live VM remained untouched
- Creating a new directory for the restored VM files
- Selecting the appropriate Hyper-V virtual network
- Providing a new name for the restored VM
- Confirming all settings and initiating the restore
Just one minute later, the restore was complete.
The new VM appeared in Hyper-V, and the VHDX file was in its designated location. Notably, only the necessary 8.6GB were restored, rather than the full 100GB VHD.
The restored VM booted up without issues, and I was able to log in successfully. This positive experience solidified my confidence in Veeam as a reliable backup and recovery solution for virtual machines.
Hopefully, future restores will be just as seamless if I ever need to recover a VM under critical circumstances!
Steve Endow is a Microsoft MVP for Dynamics GP and a Dynamics GP Certified IT Professional in Los Angeles. He is the owner of Precipio Services, which provides Dynamics GP integrations, customizations, and automation solutions.
You can also find him onGoogle+andTwitter
http://www.precipioservices.com
