Recovering an entire server to an automatically provisioned virtual machine on VMware ESX

Select the image of the source that you want to recover and the point-in-time strategy.

• Available images—Select the image of the source that contains the data you want to recover. If the image is not displayed, click Browse to look for the location of the server image.
• Live data—Select this option to recover to the live data that is currently stored on the repository server.
• Snapshot—Select this option and choose a snapshot from the list to recover to the data stored in that snapshot. If you did not enable snapshots or there were no snapshots taken on the repository server, there will be no snapshots in the list.
• Specific time—Select this option and choose a specific date and time to recover the data from that point in time. The table below the date and time fields allows you to confirm that the Double-Take RecoverNow data is valid for the point in time you are selecting. If you did not enable continuous data protection when you configured protection or if the TimeData initialization has not completed, this option will not be available.

Select the recovery server. This is the ESX server that will host the virtual machine that, after the recovery, will become your new source.

• Provision a new virtual machine for this recovery—Enable this option to recover to an automatically-provisioned virtual machine hosted on an ESX server.
• Server—Specify the name of the ESX server.

• User name—Specify the root user. If you are using VirtualCenter, you can specify another user that has the following permissions.

  • Administrator role on the VMware ESX server
  • Administrator account on VirtualCenter
  • Local administrator on the original source and the virtual recovery appliance (the existing virtual machine that will be used to create the new virtual machine)
  • Member of the Double-Take Admin security group on the original source and the virtual recovery appliance (the existing virtual machine that will be used to create the new virtual machine)
  • Full permissions and file sharing access for Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)
• Password—Specify the password associated with the User name you entered.
• Domain—This option is not necessary for an ESX server.

Because you are creating a new virtual machine, you must Recover the entire server so that the system state from the original source can be used to create the new virtual. You can exclude volumes that you protected but do not want to recover, but be careful when excluding data. Excluded volumes may compromise the integrity of your applications. Volumes marked with a checkmark are included. If there is no checkmark, the item is excluded.

Specify the volumes to create on the new virtual machine.

• Selected Data—This displays the amount of data, in gigabytes, currently on the source volume.
• Source Size—This displays the size, in gigabytes, of the volume on the source.
• Provisioned Volume—Specify the size, in gigabytes, of the volume to be created on the new virtual.
• Virtual Disk Type—For each volume you are protecting, specify the type of disk, Dynamic or Fixed, that will be created on the virtual machine.

Choose a datastore on the recovery server to store the protected data and system state information that will be incoming from the repository server. You can only select a datastore that has enough free space available.

If the size of the datastore is identical to the size of the disk on original source and there is less than 20 MB of free space on that original source, you may run out of disk space on the datastore due to differences in how the virtual disk block size is formatted. In this case, make sure that your datastore has at least 20 MB more disk space than the size of the disk on the original source.

Choose the Virtual Recovery Appliance, which is your existing virtual machine that will be used to create the new virtual machine. The existing virtual machine must have both Windows and Double-Take RecoverNow installed and licensed on it.

• Server—Specify the name of the existing virtual machine on the ESX server. The drop-down list will only display virtual machines that are running and have an operating system capable of performing a recovery.
• User name—Specify a user that is a member of the Double-Take Admin security group on the existing virtual machine. The user must also be a member of the local administrators group. If your original source was the only domain controller in your network, the user must be a local account in the local administrators group on the virtual recovery appliance.
• Password—Specify the password associated with the User name you entered.
• Domain—If you are working in a domain environment, specify the Domain.
• VMware Tools—Any servers from the Server list that do not have the latest VMware tools installed will be listed.

Configure the new virtual machine that will be created and will become the source after the recovery.

• VMware Console display name—By default, source name_VM will be used to create the new virtual machine display name. If desired, you can modify the name.
• Map replica virtual network IP to target networks—You will need to identify how you want to handle the network mapping. The Replica VM Network IP lists the IP addresses contained in the image of the original source. Map each one to a Target Network, which is a virtual network on the ESX server.
• Number of processors—Specify how many processors to configure on the virtual machine. The number of processors from the original source image is displayed.
• Amount of memory—Specify the amount of memory to configure on the virtual machine. The amount of memory from the original source image is displayed.
• Automatically power on the virtual machine—Select this checkbox if you want the virtual machine to automatically start after cutover.

Specify your recovery shutdown options.

• Wait for user intervention before recovery—Specify if you want to pause the recovery process after the original source image has been mirrored to the Virtual Recovery Appliance (the existing virtual machine), which allows you time to coordinate any other tasks. If you do not pause the recovery, after the mirror the Virtual Recovery Appliance will immediately unmount the disk(s), remove them, and start the new virtual machine.
• Shut down the source server—Specify if you want to shutdown the source server before the new virtual machine is started, which avoids identity conflicts on the network.
• Original Protection Job—Specify what to do with the original protection job if the original source is still online. If the original source is not running, these options will be discarded because they cannot be performed.
• Delete the original protection job—The original protection job is stopped and then deleted.
• Stop the original protection job—The original protection job is stopped but is not deleted. It can be restarted after the recovery.
• Leave the original protection job running—The original protection job is not stopped or deleted. Keep in mind with this option that the data on the recovery server could become inconsistent or corrupted because the original source protection job could be transmitting data to the repository server and that data might get transmitted to the recovery server, depending on the progress of the recovery process.

When the recovery mirror has completed, the Activity will change to Recovery Paused (unless you disabled the wait for user intervention option, in which case the recovery server will reboot immediately). Use this time to complete any necessary tasks. When you are ready to complete the recovery, click Recover on the Monitor jobs page toolbar (the life preserver icon) to complete the recovery process. Once the recovery server has been rebooted, it will become the original source server.

Because the Windows product activation is dependent on hardware, you may need to reactivate your Windows registration after recovery. Follow the on-screen prompts to complete the reactivation.