How to Restore physical Servers to VMs [Complete Steps]

Veeam restoring physical backup to VM

The instant recovery feature of Veeam Backup & Replication helps users quickly restore Veeam physical machines to virtual machines, providing reliable assurance for business continuity and significantly reducing downtime and data loss risks caused by system failures or disaster events.

When the VM is generated after performing the recovery, it will be consistent with the previously backed-up physical computer in many aspects. During the complex recovery process, Veeam extracts various configuration of the Veeam physical server from the backup and then applies these settings to the target virtual machine.

These important settings involved encompass multiple dimensions:

• Amount of RAM.
• Number of CPU cores.
• Number of network adapters.
• Network adapter settings.
• BIOS UUID.
• Number of disks and volumes.
• Size of volumes.

Precautions and limitations of restoring physical Server to VM

To restore a Veeam physical machines to a VM, you need to install the Veeam Agent, such as Veeam Agent for Windows or Veeam Agent for Linux, on the physical server that needs to be backed up. Then consider the following:

• Restoring Windows and Linux computers to virtual machines using full computer or volume-level backups. (Windows volume-level backups must include the system drive, and Linux volume-level backups must include the root filesystem and the partitions specified in /etc/fstab.)
• Only backups from the Veeam backup repository are allowed; Veeam Agent backups from the Veeam Cloud Connect repository cannot be used.
• The target host must have sufficient resources to support the new virtual machine; otherwise, performance will be affected.
• When restoring to the production network, the original workload must be shut down.
• If the recovery disk contains an LVM volume group, Veeam will restore the original disk and the LVM volume group as two separate disks. The data can be accurately restored, but it requires more storage space. For example, if a machine with two disks, each with an LVM volume group, is restored, it will restore four disks and occupy the corresponding space.

How to restore physical machines to vSphere VMs [Steps]

Using the Veeam Backup & Replication creates a full backup of the physical server first. Ensure that the target VMware vSphere for recovery has been added to the Veeam Backup & Replication console and that there are sufficient resources to support the operation of the restored virtual machine, including CPU, memory, storage, etc.

Next, begin restoring the Veeam physical server backup to the virtual machine.

1. Log in to the Veeam Backup & Replication management console, and on the main interface, find the backup of physical server and select Instant recovery > VMware vSphere.

2. Click Add to select workloads.

3. Choose the valid restore point to recover workloads.

4. Choose to restore the physical server to its original location or a new location.

*Note: If you choose a new location, you need to specify the target virtualization host, VM folder, new virtual machine name, new resource pool, and other information.

5. You can choose whether to redirect the write cache to a different data store, whether to perform a virus scan on the restored image, and fill in the reason for the restoration.

6. After confirming the settings are correct, click the Finish button, and Veeam will begin the instant recovery, mounting the physical machine backup as a virtual machine and starting it.

Wait for the recovery process to complete. If you want to officially migrate it to the production environment, you can use methods such as Storage vMotion, Veeam Backup & Replication's replication or VM replication feature, Quick Migration, etc., to migrate the virtual machine's data from the backup storage to the production storage.

Effective instant recovery of AOMEI Cyber Backup

In critical business scenarios where downtime is unacceptable, AOMEI Cyber Backup can have the VM up and running in a matter of minutes, minimizing the impact on business operations. This rapid recovery speed is crucial for maintaining business continuity and ensuring that services are available to users without significant interruption.

In addition to its excellent recovery capabilities, it also simplifies backup management.

It allows for scheduled backups, automatic backup verification to ensure data integrity, and efficient backup storage management.

Download AOMEI Cyber Backup by clicking the following button:

Prerequisites for instant restore:
• Computer with AOMEI Cyber Backup installed
• VMware ESXi backups created by AOMEI Cyber Backup

1. Create a scheduled VMware backup to ensure consistent protection without impacting system performance. After backup is complete, you can perform instant VM recovery as the following.

2. Click "Task" on the left menu bar, choose "Instant Restore" and click "Create New Instant Restore". Here we take "Restore from task" for an example.

3. Click Source and select the virtual machine and backup version.

4. Click Restore to and select the target device to be restored to.

5. Configure the hardware settings for the new virtual machine, such as CPU quantity, CPU Cores and memory size.

6. Name the new VM and click Start Restore to perform instant recovery.

✍Tips: After creating vm instant recovery, click Start Migration on details page to return backup to production environment.

This comprehensive approach to backup and recovery means that not only can you restore data quickly when needed, but you can also have confidence in the reliability and availability of your backups.

Conclusion

In summary, using Veeam to restore physical servers to virtual machines not only provides a way to protect critical data and systems but also enhances flexibility and disaster recovery capabilities. By using instant recovery technology, businesses can minimize downtime and ensure business continuity. Whether for planned migrations, disaster recovery, or simply to optimize resource utilization, the ability to execute these recovery operations enables businesses to remain competitive in an increasingly technology-dependent world.