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Preparing for instant recovery

Unitrends recommends planning for instant recovery before a VM fails. Review the following information to assist in preparing for instant recovery. Included is a high-level process of tasks to complete before performing an instant recovery.

Back up assets

Instant recovery can be performed at any time a long as there are backups or backup copies for your VMs and sufficient backup storage is allocated as instant recovery space. Run host-level backups for the virtual machines you wish to protect with instant recovery. For details, see Host-level Backups Overview.

Allocate storage for instant recovery

Unitrends strongly recommends reserving space for instant recovery soon after initial deployment and before a VM fails. If necessary, you can allocate instant recovery space later, but doing so may require the appliance to purge local backups to make room for the newly allocated instant recovery space.

Because the disk for a recovered VM resides on the appliance until storage migration completes, you must allocate a portion of your backup storage for instant recovery. You must allocate at least 20 percent of the space used on the VM’s original disk. Storage allocated for instant recovery cannot be used for backups.

Supported storage procedures vary by Unitrends appliance type:

Recovery-Series physical appliances come with a set amount of backup storage. Backup storage allocation can be modified to increase the amount used for instant recovery. Backup storage cannot be added to the appliance.
UEB virtual appliances are deployed as virtual machines. After initial deployment, you can add more backup storage as desired.

If space is not available for instant recovery after a VM fails, adjust the storage allocation and use the newly configured storage for the instant recovery. For instructions on expanding your storage, see Backup storage in the Configuration chapter.

Select and add a target host

After verifying that there is enough space for the recovery, select a target host and add the host to the appliance. For instructions on adding virtual hosts and vCenter servers, see Adding a virtual host.

Note:  For VMware VMs, add the vCenter managing the target hosts.

Perform instant recovery in audit mode

Perform instant recovery in audit mode to verify that backups and imported backup copies can be used to recover the VM. Repeat this procedure as needed to test new backups. The same dialog is used for audits and instant recovery. See Performing instant recovery for instructions.

Access the virtual machine to ensure that it is operational and to verify the VM can be recovered in the event of a disaster. Applications on the VM requiring network access are not fully functional in audit mode.

Exit audit mode

Changes to the VM in audit mode are lost upon exiting audit mode.

To exit audit mode

1 Select Recover and click the Instant Recovery tab.
2 Select the VM.
3 Click Tear Down.
4 Click Confirm.