VADP Recovery using command line

Published   Read time 1 min 43 sec(s)   (2912 views).  NetWorker  

Prereqs to a successful VADP restore are that the virtual machine be removed from the Inventory in VCenter (right click vm, remove from Inventory), and the folder containing the virtual machines files in the vmware datastore be renamed or removed. If the vm still exists in vmware or in the datastore, VADP will not recover it.

Log onto the backup server over ssh and obtain the save set ID for your VADP "FULLVM" backup.

mminfo -avot -q "name=FULLVM,level=full"

Make a note of the SSID for the vm/backup client (or copy it to the cut/paste buffer)

e.g. 1021210946

Log onto the VADP Proxy (which has SAN connectivity over fibre necessary to recover the files back to the datastore using the san VADP recover mode)

recover.exe -S 1021210946 -o VADP:host=VC_Svr;VADP:transmode=san

Note that if you want to recover a VM back to a different vCenter,Datastore,ESX host and/or different resource pool, you can do that from the recover command too, rather than waiting to do it using the vsphere client. this can be used if your vm still exists in vmware and you don't want to overwrite it.

You can additionally specify any of the following fields in the recover command, seperated by semicolons (do not include spaces):

  • VADP:host=
  • VADP:datacenter=
  • VADP:resourcepool=
  • VADP:hostsystem=
  • VADP:datastore=

I've found that whilst the minimal command above may work on some environments, others demand a far more detailed recover.exe command with all VADP parameters set before it'll communicate with the VC.

A working example is shown below (with each VADP parameter separated on a newline for readability — you'll need to put it into a single line, and remove any spaces between each entry.

C:\> recover.exe -S 131958294 -o VADP:host=vc.fqdn;
VADP:transmode=san;
VADP:datacenter=vmware-datacenter-name;
VADP:hostsystem=esxihost.fqdn;
VADP:displayname=VM_DISPLAYNAME;
VADP:datastore="config=VM_DataStore
   #Hard disk 2=VM_DataStore_LUN_Name
   #Hard disk 1=VM_DataStore_LUN_Name";
VADP:user=mydomain\vadp_user;
VADP:password=vadp_password