Hi there,
I am playing here with FastBack BMR. I was able to make the WinPE image and completely restore machine on new ESXi. But after restore when I started the machine, Windows wanted to activate itself and all this stuff. So I get stuck there.
So I decided to do is another way that may work:
1. Copy all VM files from old ESXi, via SSH if you can stop the VM, if not VMWare VCB is the option.
3. On second ESXi copy the prepared Windows PE image to the datastore.
5. Shange VM settings to boot from WinPe.
6. Start the copied VM on new ESXi.
7. Choose "I movied it" and boot form the PE image.
8. Restore the C: drive with WinPE
9. Restore the D: drive with WinPE
10. Restart the VM and start the Windows.
All sounds fine, buuut, my D: drive is about 800GB and I can’t stop VM for backup! So to backup/restore VM I need to copy it from one ESXi to another(with VCB I may backup only full VM) and then apply incremental changes with FastBack. This is too much downtime.
Maybe there is a way to save VM configuration, just configuration, base on what I can made a new VM with all IDs and all this stuff. And then just restore OS and DATA with FB? Or how it(BMR in VMs) works in real world? Maybe I make too complex this stuff.
Regards,
Eps
I am playing here with FastBack BMR. I was able to make the WinPE image and completely restore machine on new ESXi. But after restore when I started the machine, Windows wanted to activate itself and all this stuff. So I get stuck there.
So I decided to do is another way that may work:
1. Copy all VM files from old ESXi, via SSH if you can stop the VM, if not VMWare VCB is the option.
3. On second ESXi copy the prepared Windows PE image to the datastore.
5. Shange VM settings to boot from WinPe.
6. Start the copied VM on new ESXi.
7. Choose "I movied it" and boot form the PE image.
8. Restore the C: drive with WinPE
9. Restore the D: drive with WinPE
10. Restart the VM and start the Windows.
All sounds fine, buuut, my D: drive is about 800GB and I can’t stop VM for backup! So to backup/restore VM I need to copy it from one ESXi to another(with VCB I may backup only full VM) and then apply incremental changes with FastBack. This is too much downtime.
Maybe there is a way to save VM configuration, just configuration, base on what I can made a new VM with all IDs and all this stuff. And then just restore OS and DATA with FB? Or how it(BMR in VMs) works in real world? Maybe I make too complex this stuff.
Regards,
Eps
