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NetApp Backup and Recovery

Restore files and folders from Hyper-V VM backups

Contributors netapp-mwallis
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Restore files and folders from Hyper-V VM backups on primary storage to a Windows guest VM.

Restore files and folders

Mount a virtual disk from a snapshot and restore files and folders from it to the original (source) Windows VM.

Before you begin

Before you can restore files and folders, you must create a credential for source VM in NetApp Backup and Recovery. This credential is used used to authenticate with the VM during the restore process.

About this task

When you open a file and folder restore session by mounting a virtual disk, the session remains active for 48 hours.

Restore performance depends on both the size and the number of files or folders being restored. For a given data set size, restoring a large number of small files typically takes longer than restoring a small number of large files.

Note the following when restoring files and folders:

Note

  • You cannot restore files and folders to Linux guest VMs at this time.

  • Restoring files and folders is not supported from backups stored on secondary storage or object storage.

  • You cannot restore files or folders to VMs that reside on SAN storage.

  • Only one attach or restore operation can run at the same time on a VM. You cannot run parallel attach or restore operations on the same VM.

  • Viewing or browsing reserved partitions might cause an error.

  • During the restore operation, the hidden, system, and encrypted attributes of guest files are not kept in the restored file.

  • You can view and restore system and hidden files and view encrypted files.

  • Do not overwrite an existing system file or restore encrypted files to an encrypted folder.
Steps

  1. From the NetApp Backup and Recovery menu, select Restore.

  2. Select Hyper-V from the workloads list at the top right of the page.

  3. In the list of virtual machines, select the Restore action for a VM that contains files or folders that you want to restore.

  4. Select Files and folders.

  5. On the Restore from snapshots page, do the following:

    1. Optionally, select a time frame to filter the list of snapshots by creation time.

    2. Select a snapshot on primary storage from which to restore and then select Next.

  6. From the list, choose a virtual disk that has the files and folders you need to restore and then select Next.

  7. On the Guest virtual machine details page, do the following:

    1. In the Guest virtual machine details section, attach the virtual disk to the original VM by selecting Original virtual machine.

    2. Optionally, in the Guest virtual machine credentials section, if you haven't yet stored a credential for the source virtual disk and destination VM, select Add credentials, enter the Windows credential information, and select Add.

    3. From the list, choose a virtual machine credential to use.

    4. Select Next.

      NetApp Backup and Recovery attaches the virtual disk to the original VM and displays all files and folders, including hidden ones. It assigns a drive letter to every partition, including system reserved partitions.

      You can use the magnifying glass (search) icon near the file browser pane to search for files and folders. Pattern matching is not supported, but you can search for files or folders based on a subset of the name or extension.

  8. On the Choose files or folders to restore page, do the following:

    1. Select files or folders to restore.

      Files and folders you have selected to restore are listed in the Selected files and folders area.

    2. Select Next.

  9. On the Guest file restore - destination page, do the following:

    1. In the "Restore to path" section, enter the UNC path to the destination VM and filesystem location where the selected files will be restored:

      • IPv4 path example: \\10.60.136.65\c$

      • IPv6 path example: \\fd20-8b1e-b255-832e—​61.ipv6-literal.net\C\restore

    If there are existing files with the same name, you can choose to overwrite or skip them.

  10. In the "Post-restore-options" section, you can optionally disconnect the guest session after the restore completes by enabling the Disconnect guest session after the restore completes setting. This detaches the virtual disk and unmounts the datastore. This means you will need to reconnect the guest session before performing any additional file and folder restore operations.

  11. Select Restore.

    You can view the restore progress on the Job Monitoring page.

Manage active live disk mount sessions

View, use, and delete the active Hyper-V file and folder restore sessions from within Backup and Recovery.

Steps

  1. From the NetApp Backup and Recovery menu, select Clone.

  2. Select Hyper-V from the workloads list at the top right of the page.

  3. Select the Live disk mount sessions menu.

    The list of open virtual disk mount sessions appears.

  4. Optionally, to use a session to restore files and folders to a guest VM, open the Actions menu Actions option for a session and select Restore files and folders.

  5. Optionally, to delete a session, open the Actions menu Actions option for a session and select Delete.