Notes on Instant Recovery for VMware
Note the following about instant recovery of VMware virtual machines:
Supports the following storage unit types (disk only): BasicDisk, AdvancedDisk, Media Server Deduplication Pool (MSDP), and qualified third-party OpenStorage devices.
Note: Snapshot-only backups are not supported.
Does not support a virtual machine that had the disks that were excluded from the backup. The policy option must have been set to include all disks.
Does not support a virtual machine that has a disk in raw device mapping mode (RDM) or that has a disk in Persistent mode.
Supports the following policy schedule types: Full backups, and the incremental backups that include the option with a disk-based storage unit. Incrementals without the policy option are not supported.
Does not support virtual machine templates.
If the virtual machine contains an IDE drive, the restored virtual machine may not start. This issue is not unique to instant recovery.
To avoid host name or IP address conflicts between the current virtual machine and the virtual machine version you want to restore: Shut down the virtual machine in your production environment before you start the recovery. Then change the display name of the current virtual machine, or use the -R option on nbrestorevm to rename the restored virtual machine.
For a virtual machine that is running under a high load, migration of the virtual machine may take longer than expected. For this reason, NetBackup changes the virtual machine's fsr.maxSwitchoverSeconds property to 900.
For example, this increase may be necessary when the virtual machine is restored from a deduplication storage unit.
The following VMware Knowledge Base article contains more information on the fsr.maxSwitchoverSeconds property:
Using Storage vMotion to migrate a virtual machine with many disks timeout
Note the following about the virtual machine's datastore name:
If the name of the datastore includes spaces, the name should be enclosed in double quotes ("").
A virtual machine restore may fail if the name of the datastore (that was used at the time of the backup) ended with a period.
The following tech note contains additional information.
Instant recovery cannot restore a vCloud virtual machine into vCloud. The virtual machine is restored into vSphere. You can copy or import the restored virtual machine into vCloud by means of the Copy option in vCloud.
Note that the vCloud Move option does not work with a virtual machine that runs from a NetBackup datastore.
Storage lifecycle policies (SLPs) can use Auto Image Replication to replicate a virtual machine backup image to another NetBackup domain. To restore the virtual machine from the replicated image, you must include the -vmproxy option on the nbrestorevm command. Use the -vmproxy option to specify the backup host (access host) that is in the domain where the virtual machine was replicated.
Without the -vmproxy option, nbrestorevm defaults to the backup host in the original domain and the restore fails.
Supports recovery of virtual machines containing independent disks. The independent disks that are associated with the virtual machine are recovered to the virtual machine working directory on the temporary datastore. This functionality requires a NetBackup 8.3 or later recovery host.