Recover VMware VMs & Files

After you protect your VMware sources, you can recover VMs and files from your backups, to their original or a new location.

Before you Begin

Deploy Cohesity Agent on VMs for File Recovery

File or folder recovery of VMware VMs requires a Linux or Windows Cohesity agent installed on the target VM. For details on how to install a Cohesity agent, see Download and Install the Cohesity Agent.

Recover VMware VMs or Files

To recover VMware VMs or files:

  1. In DataProtect as a Service, go to Sources to set up your recovery task.

  2. Click on the Source name.

  3. Above the tree, select Protection Status > Protected.

  4. Use the filters, search box, and views to locate the objects or files you need.

  5. To recover:

  6. Select your Recovery Options and click Start Recovery.

    If you are recovering a VM to the original location and enable Overwrite Existing VM, you can choose to take advantage of Attempt Differential Recovery to shorten your recovery time, after considering the implications below.

Cohesity DataProtect as a Service begins to restore the selected VMs or files to the selected location.

Accelerate VM Recoveries with Differential Restore

In Cohesity DataProtect as a Service, you can recover the VM by overwriting only the difference between the original VM and the snapshot selected for recovery. This option is available only if you have selected to recover to the original location and enabled Overwrite Existing VM in the VM recovery options in your recovery task.

Differential recovery substantially reduces the amount of data transfer in a recovery process. In the task activity log (under Activity), you can view the amount of data transfer saved by selecting differential recovery.

However, there are several important implications to consider before choosing to Attempt Differential Recovery:

  • Any newly added data in the original VM is deleted.

  • The recovered VM will have the existing VM name.

  • You can choose this option if there are no hardware configuration changes involved in the original VM.

  • If you want to reclaim free space for thin-provisioned disks, then Cohesity recommends not to attempt differential recovery and only perform Overwrite Existing VM recovery.

  • If the original VM is not present or if the attempt at differential recovery fails, then Cohesity DataProtect as a Service will perform an Overwrite Existing VM recovery.

  • In the original VM, if there are any newly added disks or any disks that were excluded during backup, then the recovered VM will not have these newly added disks, nor any disks excluded during backup.

  • All the snapshots present on the original VM are consolidated and removed as part of differential recovery.