Restoring virtual machines

HYCU for Azure enables you to restore an entire virtual machine or individual virtual machine disks to a specific point in time.

Prerequisite

Only if a custom firewall rule is applied. Traffic to the *.azure.com, *.core.windows.net, *.servicebus.windows.net, and *.microsoftonline.com endpoints must be allowed.

Considerations

  • Only one restore task can run at the same time for the virtual machine.

  • When restoring data archives, HYCU for Azure performs data rehydration during which an archived blob is copied to the online hot tier (on a temporary container). Keep in mind that this can take a few hours to complete.

Restore options

You can select among the following restore options:

Restore option Description Instructions
Restore VM

Enables you to restore a virtual machine to its original location with the same configuration settings.

“Restoring a virtual machine”

Clone VM

Enables you to restore a virtual machine by creating a virtual machine clone in its original or a new location with different configuration settings.

“Cloning a virtual machine”

Restore Disks

Enables you to restore virtual machine disks with the same configuration settings.

“Restoring virtual machine disks”

Clone Disks Enables you to restore virtual machine disks by creating disk clones with different configuration settings. “Cloning virtual machine disks”
Export Disks Enables you to restore virtual machine disks to the same or a different Azure region. “Exporting virtual machine disks”

To access the Virtual Machines panel, in the navigation pane, click  Virtual Machines.

Restoring a virtual machine

You can restore an entire virtual machine to its original location with the same settings.

Prerequisites

  • Only if you plan to restore an entire virtual machine. You have deleted the original virtual machine and all its disks from Azure.
  • Only if you plan to restore individual disks other than the boot disk. You have deleted only the individual disks (not the entire virtual machine) from Azure.
  • Only if you plan to restore the boot disk. You have deleted the entire virtual machine and the boot disk from Azure.

Consideration

Any data changes after the last successful backup are not protected and therefore cannot be restored.

Procedure

  1. In the Virtual Machines panel, click the virtual machine that you want to restore. The Details section appears at the bottom of the screen.

    n Note  The Details section appears only if you click a virtual machine. Selecting the check box before the name of the virtual machine will not open the Details section.

  2. In the Details section, select the desired restore point, and then click  Restore VM.

  3. Select Restore VM, and then click Next.

  4. From the Restore from drop-down menu, select which tier you want to use for the restore. Your restore point can contain one or more tiers among which you can select:

    • Automatic: This option ensures the fastest and most cost-effective restore.
    • Backup (Snapshot)
    • Backup (Target)
    • Copy
    • Archive - daily
    • Archive - weekly
    • Archive - monthly
    • Archive - yearly

    i Important  Only if the virtual machine that you are restoring has trusted launch enabled and you want to keep this security type also after the restore. Make sure to select the Backup (Snapshot) tier. Otherwise, the security type of the restored virtual machine will be changed to Standard.

  5. From the Disks drop-down menu, select the disks that you want to restore.

    n Note  By default, all the disks are selected. This means that the entire virtual machine will be restored if you did not exclude the individual disks from the backup as described in “Configuring backup options”.

  6. Click Validate to verify if the restore task can be run successfully.

  7. Click Restore.

Cloning a virtual machine

You can restore a virtual machine to its original or a new location with custom settings. In this case, you create a new virtual machine containing the restored data alongside the original virtual machine. For the new virtual machine, you can specify a different resource group, geographic region, and/or virtual network.

Prerequisite

Only if you plan to restore multiple virtual machine disks. You have updated the list of virtual machines. To update the list of virtual machines, in the Virtual Machines panel, click  Synchronize.

Limitation

Restoring virtual machines with unmanaged disks to a different resource group is not supported.

Procedure

  1. In the Virtual Machines panel, click the virtual machine that you want to restore. The Details section appears at the bottom of the screen.

    n Note  The Details section appears only if you click a virtual machine. Selecting the check box before the name of the virtual machine will not open the Details section.

  2. In the Details section, select the desired restore point, and then click  Restore VM.

  3. Select Clone VM, and then click Next.

  4. In the New virtual machine name field, enter a name for the virtual machine.

  5. From the Restore from drop-down menu, select which tier you want to use for the restore. Your restore point can contain one or more tiers among which you can select:

    • Automatic: This option ensures the fastest and most cost-effective restore.
    • Backup (Snapshot)
    • Backup (Target)
    • Copy
    • Archive - daily
    • Archive - weekly
    • Archive - monthly
    • Archive - yearly

    i Important  Only if the virtual machine that you are restoring has trusted launch enabled and you want to keep this security type also after the restore. Make sure to select the Backup (Snapshot) tier. Otherwise, the security type of the restored virtual machine will be changed to Standard.

  6. From the Disks drop-down menu, select the disks that you want to restore.

    n Note  By default, all the disks are selected. This means that a new virtual machine containing the restored data will be created alongside the original virtual machine. The new virtual machine will include all the disks if you did not exclude individual disks from the backup as described in “Configuring backup options”.

  7. From the Resource group drop-down menu, select the resource group for the restored virtual machine.

  8. From the Location drop-down menu, select the geographic region for the restored virtual machine.

    i Important  If you select a region other than the original one for the restored virtual machine, you will be charged for outbound data transfer. For details, see Azure pricing.

  9. From the Availability Zone drop-down menu, select the zone for the restored virtual machine.

    n Note  Keep in mind the following:

    • The selected geographic region and the size of the virtual machine determine to which zones you can restore data. If you do not want to restore data to any zone, select None.

    • If you select a zone, only static public IP addresses can be assigned to the network interface on the restored virtual machine. For more information about public IP addresses, see Azure documentation.

  10. Under Network interfaces, you can view the network interface that will be added to the restored virtual machine. By default, this is the first network interface from the resource group that you selected for the restored virtual machine. If required, you can also modify network settings.

    If you want to modify network settings, you can add an additional network interface, edit an existing network interface, or delete a network interface:

    • Click Add network interface to add a network interface or click  Edit next to the network interface that you want to edit, and then follow these steps:

      1. Only if you are adding a network interface. From the Virtual network drop-down menu, select the virtual network for the network interface.

        n Note  The list of available virtual networks includes only the ones within the region you selected for the restored virtual machine.

      2. Select the subnet to which the network interface should be assigned.

      3. In the Public IP address type field, select the public IP address for the network interface. You can select among the following options:

        Option Description
        None No public IP address will be assigned to the network interface on the restored virtual machine.
        Dynamic

        A dynamic public IP address will be assigned to the network interface on the restored virtual machine.

        n Note  This option is not available if you previously selected a zone for your restored virtual machine.
        Static A static public IP address will be assigned to the network interface on the restored virtual machine.
        Existing

        A preferred public IP address that you have created in Azure will be assigned to the network interface on the restored virtual machine.

        n Note  Because the restored virtual machine can only be assigned a Regional Tier public IP address, only such addresses are available from the drop-down list.

      4. In the Private IP address type field, select the private IP address for the network interface. You can select between the following options:

        Option Description
        Dynamic A dynamic private IP address will be assigned to the network interface on the restored virtual machine.
        Static

        A static private IP address will be assigned to the network interface on the restored virtual machine.

      5. Click Add or Save.

    • Click  Delete next to the network interface that you want to delete. Keep in mind that you cannot restore the virtual machine without a network interface.

  11. Click Validate to verify if the restore task can be run successfully.

  12. Click Restore.

Restoring virtual machine disks

You can restore virtual machine disks and attach them to the same virtual machine. In this case, you replace the original disks with the restored ones.

Limitation

Restoring unmanaged disks is not supported.

Procedure

  1. In the Virtual Machines panel, click the virtual machine whose disks you want to restore. The Details section appears at the bottom of the screen.

    n Note  The Details section appears only if you click a virtual machine. Selecting the check box before the name of the virtual machine will not open the Details section.

  2. In the Details section, select the desired restore point, and then click  Restore VM.

  3. Select Restore Disks, and then click Next.

  4. From the list of disks that are available for the restore, select the ones that you want to restore, and then click Next.

    n Note  If you select the boot disk, the virtual machine will be restarted after the disks are restored.

  5. From the Restore from drop-down menu, select which tier you want to use for the restore. Your restore point can contain one or more tiers among which you can select:

    • Automatic: This option ensures the fastest and most cost-effective restore.
    • Backup (Snapshot)
    • Backup (Target)
    • Copy
    • Archive - daily
    • Archive - weekly
    • Archive - monthly
    • Archive - yearly
  6. Click Validate to verify if the restore task can be run successfully.

  7. Click Restore.

Cloning virtual machine disks

You can create clones of virtual machine disks by restoring the disks and attaching them to the same or a different virtual machine. In this case, the disks will be attached to the preferred virtual machine.

Limitations

  • Cloning unmanaged disks is not supported.

  • You can attach the cloned disks only to a virtual machine that is running the same operating system as the original virtual machine and that belongs to the same protection set as the original virtual machine.

Considerations

  • The name format of the cloned disk is hycu-disk-<UUID>-<DiskName>.
  • Only if you are cloning disks to the same virtual machine. After cloning the disks, make sure to change their UUIDs to be able to perform further tasks on the virtual machine.

Procedure

  1. In the Virtual Machines panel, click the virtual machine whose disks you want to restore. The Details section appears at the bottom of the screen.

    n Note  The Details section appears only if you click a virtual machine. Selecting the check box before the name of the virtual machine will not open the Details section.

  2. In the Details section, select the desired restore point, and then click  Restore VM.

  3. Select Clone Disks, and then click Next.

  4. From the list of disks that are available for the restore, select the ones that you want to restore, and then click Next.

  5. From the Restore from drop-down menu, select which tier you want to use for the restore. Your restore point can contain one or more tiers among which you can select:

    • Automatic: This option ensures the fastest and most cost-effective restore.
    • Backup (Snapshot)
    • Backup (Target)
    • Copy
    • Archive - daily
    • Archive - weekly
    • Archive - monthly
    • Archive - yearly

  6. From the Subscription drop-down menu, select the subscription that contains the virtual machine to which you want to attach the cloned disks.

  7. From the Resource group drop-down menu, select the resource group of the virtual machine to which you want to attach the cloned disks.

  8. From the Location drop-down menu, select the geographic region of the virtual machine to which you want to attach the cloned disks.

    i Important  If you select a region other than the original one, you will be charged for outbound data transfer. For details, see Azure pricing.

  9. From the Virtual machine drop-down menu, select the virtual machine to which you want to attach the cloned disks.

  10. Only if you want to change the cloned disk name. Under Disk name, for each disk whose name you want to change, do the following:

    1. Click  Edit Disk next to the name of the disk.
    2. In the New disk name field, enter a new name for the cloned disk.
    3. Click Save.

    n Note  You can always change the name of the disk back to the original one by clicking  Undo New Disk Name next to the name of the disk whose name you changed.

  11. Click Validate to verify if the restore task can be run successfully.

  12. Click Restore.

Exporting virtual machine disks

You can export disks by restoring them to the same or a different Azure region. In this case, the disks will not be attached to any virtual machine.

Limitation

Exporting unmanaged disks is not supported.

Consideration

The name format of the exported disk is hycu-disk-<UUID>-<DiskName>.

Procedure

  1. In the Virtual Machines panel, click the virtual machine whose disks you want to export. The Details section appears at the bottom of the screen.

    n Note  The Details section appears only if you click a virtual machine. Selecting the check box before the name of the virtual machine will not open the Details section.

  2. In the Details section, select the desired restore point, and then click  Restore VM.

  3. Select Export Disks, and then click Next.

  4. From the list of disks that are available for the restore, select the ones that you want to restore, and then click Next.

  5. From the Restore from drop-down menu, select which tier you want to use for the restore. Your restore point can contain one or more tiers among which you can select:

    • Automatic: This option ensures the fastest and most cost-effective restore.
    • Backup (Snapshot)
    • Backup (Target)
    • Copy
    • Archive - daily
    • Archive - weekly
    • Archive - monthly
    • Archive - yearly
  6. From the Subscription drop-down menu, select the subscription to which you want to export the disks.
  7. From the Resource group drop-down menu, select the resource group to which you want to export the disks.

  8. From the Location drop-down menu, select the geographic region to which you want to export the disks.

  9. From the Availability Zone drop-down menu, select the zone to which you want to export the disks.

    n Note  The selected geographic region determines to which zones you can restore data. If you do not want to restore data to any zone, select None.

  10. Only if you want to change the exported disk name. Under Disk name, for each disk whose name you want to change, do the following:

    1. Click  Edit Disk next to the name of the disk.
    2. In the New disk name field, enter a new name for the exported disk.
    3. Click Save.

    n Note  You can always change the name of the disk back to the original one by clicking  Undo New Disk Name next to the name of the disk whose name you changed.

  11. Click Validate to verify if the restore task can be run successfully.

  12. Click Restore.