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Avamar VM image restores - disk provisioning overview?
Can someone provide an overview on Avamar VM image restores and VM disk provisioning relative to the data that was backed up?
That is, I want to better understand the restore process with respect to how a VM's disks will be created/provisioned by Avamar when that VM image backup is restored to "new", restored to "existing" but different, and restored to "original".
Working with a customer and it appears that when they do a restore at their DR site of a VM image that has been replicated from the primary site, all of the disks appear to be created with thick provisioning - and for some disks depending on the VM image being restored, this results in substantially longer restore times due to disks that have large provisioned capacities but not much actual data on them.
(e.g. a disk on the original VM that was thin provisioned for 1TB and only has a few GB on it will restore at the DR site as the full thick provisioned 1TB - or at least it seems to take the time that a 1TB disk would take to restore)
Posting this because I've tried to search for it and can't seem to find anything definitive.
All comments/feedback appreciated - thanks.
Pawan_Kumawat
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June 9th, 2017 03:00
Hi,
When you restore .vmdk of a VM, you get following options -
1. Restore to original
2. Restore to different existing VM
3. Restore to new VM
When you restore to original VM, the VM should be powered off.
Now you have two choices, either restore all the disks or restore on C drive or Boot drive.
For example, You have lost data only from E drive and VM is up and running, you can only restore E drive.
In case you have not loose any data but VM OS got corrupted for some reasons, you can restore on C drive or Boot drive.
When you restore to different existing VM, you need to power off target VM first.
Now you can made choices what you want to restore.
Looks like you are asking more about third case - Restore to new VM.
In this case, I prefer to select all the disks. You may select only C drive or Boot drive but if any application is installed on other then C drive, will not work.
When you select option to restore to new VM, you will be asked following information -
VM Name
VM folder on VC
VM Cluster or VMware hostname on VC
Datastore etc.
You should be able to get all this information from your virtualization team.
Now important point to notice, if Disk size is 1 TB, backup and restore, both take it as 1 TB disk.
If you go to more options, you will find option as - "Use change block Tracking to increase performance".
If you select this option, it will decrease backup and restore time, this is where it looks for changed blocks.
I hope this will be helpful. Please let me know if you need more information.
Regards,
Pawan