Windows Instant Recovery
This help is for Windows Instant Recovery feature supported by Unitrends version 7.3 and below. For the most up-to-date information on this feature, please click here to go to the Administrator's Guide.
This subsystem allows the user to create and manage Windows systems for Windows Instant Recovery through Failover Virtualization. The Windows Instant Recovery Tool consists of a grid area showing each of the virtual clients and their current status, and at the bottom of the system are pie charts showing the summary of processor, memory, and storage allocated to failover virtualization.
Prerequisites
Before adding your first virtual client, you must allocate storage space to failover virutalization by going to the Storage Allocation interface under Settings > Storage and Retention > Storage. Once that is completed, you should then create a network bridge that your virtual clients will use to access the physical network when they go live. To do this, click on Settings >Instant Recovery> Virtual Network and then select the network adapter for which you wish to create a network bridge.
Adding a Virtual Client
To add a virtual client, click on the Add button at the bottom of the screen, then select the name of the client you wish to add (the Windows client must have at least the Release 6.2 agent installed before it will show up in the list of clients that may be added). Once you select a client, you then choose the configuration of the virtual client, including its number of virtual processors, the amount of virtual memory, and the volumes to be protected. By default, all volumes will be selected for restore to the virtual client but in some cases, e.g., a volume is located on an external SAN, the user may decide to de-select a volume. Volumes that are critical for client operation are identified, with the reason why they are critical, for instance, the volume on which system state resides or on which the Unitrends Agent is installed. Addition of a virtual client will fail if any critical volume is de-selected and in the majority of instances, the user will want to select all volumes.
If the client being protected for Windows Instant Recovery using Failover Virtualization has Microsoft Exchange and/or Microsoft SQL Server installed on it, you will see additional tabs in the bottom area of the virtual client configuration screen, one per application. By clicking on these tabs, will you see and be able to select the storage groups or databases that you wish to be restored to the virtual client. Note that if no backups exist for these databases or storage groups, they can be selected but will not be protected by failover virtualization until successfully backed-up. Along with the file-based backups, application backups for the selected items will be automatically restored to the virtual client so that the applications will go live much more rapidly than if these applications had to be restored after the virtual client had gone live. The SQL Server system databases (master, model, and msdb) are automatically restored to the virtual client, so will always be pre-selected in the database list.
States
Virtual clients exist in one of the following states:
- new - The virtual client is newly created and is awaiting the initial restore operation backup data to complete.
- restore - This state indicates that a backup of the original system is currently being restored to the failover virtual client. A failover virtual machine cannot be launched into Audit mode or Live mode if the virtual client is in restore state.
- idle - This state indicates that the failover virtual client is not performing any restore operation at this time and has completed one or more restores.
- audit - This state indicates that the virtual client is booted into Audit mode. This is a way of verifying the client in terms of ensuring that it is bootable. In this state, there is no network configured for the client so it is only accessible through the VNC port, as displayed in the virtual client status grid.
- verify - This state indicates that the client has been configured to periodically go into audit mode and create verification emails to be sent to the user, and the client is in the verification process at this time.
- live - This state indicates that the virtual client is booted into Live mode, which means that the original server has failed, and the virtual client has taken over the operational duties of the failed server.
- off - This state indicates that the virtual client is powered off after the virtual client has been executed in Live mode.
- halted - This state indicates that the virtual client is temporarily unavailable for restore, audit or live mode due to insufficient resources (processors, memory, disk). The system will attempt to retry operations to move a client out of the halted state, but if the condition persists, you will need to reduce processors and/or memory allocated to this or other virtual clients on the system, or you may need to allocate more of your overall available storage to virtual failover.
- destroy - This state indicates that the user has initiated a deletion of the failover virtual client and the appliance is awaiting another state to complete to initiate the destroy phase of the virtual client.
Modifying a Virtual Client
Once created, the volumes protected by the virtual client cannot be changed. You must delete and then re-create the client and select different volumes to protect. Users are allowed to add or remove Microsoft Exchange or SQL Server storage groups or databases to the list of ones being protected. If added, backups of these databases or storage groups will be restored to the virtual client, and if removed they will no longer be restored to the virtual client. Note: when removing databases or storage groups from the list of selected items, files that were previously restored will not be deleted from the virtual client, but subsequent backups will not be restored to the virtual client.
Users can change the amount of virtual memory or number of virtual processors assigned to the virtual client after initial creation. You should take care not to overallocate resources to the virtual clients or overall appliance performance (backups, deduplication, etc.) will be adversely affected.
If for some reason you wish to stop restores from being automatically performed on the virtual clients, you can temporarily disable it by clicking on the client to modify it and by de-selecting the Enable virtual restores to the failover client checkbox. If you would like a periodic check of the virtual client's viability, an automatic boot to audit mode and screenshot will be emailed to the user by selecting the Email the failover virtual client recovery verification report checkbox. Then this is in progress, the client will be in the verify state.
Restore Status
The Restores button to the left of the Add button on the Windows Instant Recovery Tool is used to get a current "snapshot" or point-in-time view of the restores of the virtual clients on a system. The upper half of the screen, called Last Backups, shows the last successful backups that were restored to the virtual client(s), including the type of backups restored and their dates. The lower half of the screen shows Pending Restores, which are restores either waiting or in progress to the virtual clients, and shows the backup type and time. If the virtual restore is currently in progress, the Active column will be checked.
Live Mode
After you go into Live mode and the Windows system starts up, you must perform these steps:
- Check the disk configuration using Windows' Disk Management. Press the Start button, right-click the Computer item and choose Manage. From there, choose Storage->Disk Management. This application shows a graphical view of all disks and volumes. If the disk manager shows any disks in the 'Offline' state, then right-click the disk icon and choose Online. If it shows any dynamic disks are as "Foreign", right click the disk icon and choose Import. After these are complete, all volumes should appear as they did on the original server.
- Set the system clock. The client may be running with the system clock time that existed during the latest backup. This may cause the client to boot with a date/time in the past.
- Allow Windows to auto-configure new drivers. On first boot, Windows will not immediately recognize some of the new "hardware" components and will automatically perform some driver updates. When this is complete, the system will prompt to reboot.
- Set the permanent network address. The network adapter that Windows shows for the virtual client will almost certainly be different from that of the original server. In this case, Windows will see that the adapter has changed, so it will not automatically reassign the original network addressing properties. From the Windows Control Panel update the networking properties for the adapter to match those of the original server.
- If this client is running SQL Server, verify that all SQL services have started successfully.
- Activate Windows Server/Workstation. On first boot of a virtual client, Windows will have to be re-activated.
- Confirm the Client using the Rapid Recovery Console. In the RRC, go to Configure > Clients and Click on the name of the Client. On this screen, press Confirm.
- Reboot the virtual client. If this is a SQL Server, ensure that all databases have completed their "live restore" process before rebooting. A summary of the database live restore process will be located in PCBP\logs.dir and named SQLLiveRestore.log and each database will have a separate log, named SQLLiveRestoreReport_InstanceName_Databasename.log. If for some reason this SQL live restore process does not start, you can start manually with the command
C:\PCBP\BPSQLUtil.exe live
where in this example, the agent is installed in the default directory, C:\PCBP. If any databases still fail to restore, proceed with the reboot, then use the RRC to restore the SQL databases to the server.
Once the virtual client is configured as above, it is accessible on the network with the original IP address of the original Windows server. The virtual client is now available to perform the role of the original failed Windows server. The backup, archiving and replication schedules for the original Windows server continue to protect the virtual client. The original Windows server can now be restored using Bare Metal recovery.
Audit Mode
Audit mode is used to verify basic client functionality. Clients in audit mode have no network configured, so Windows services that rely on the network will not start, such as SQL Server instance services or SharePoint services.
With no network, the client will only be accessible using the VNC port. Using a VNC viewer, specify the IP address of the system followed by a colon and the VNC Port seen in the Failover Client Manager's list of virtual clients. Example: If the VNC Port specified in the Failover Client Manager is 5905 and the IP address of the Unitrends system is 192.168.111.120, the virtual client can be accessed as 192.168.111.120:5905.
If this is a SQL Server, ensure that all databases that do not require network access have completed
their audit restore process before rebooting. A summary of the database audit restore process
will be located in PCBP\logs.dir and named SQLAuditRestore.log and each database will have a separate log, named
SQLAuditRestoreReport_InstanceName_Databasename.log. If for some reason this SQL audit restore process does not start,
you can start manually with the command
C:\PCBP\BPSQLUtil.exe audit