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HYF_JE
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Veeam Windows Agent Restore Confusion

Post by HYF_JE »

No support case at this time, this isn't something I must solve, though it does bug me. Forum moderators, please move this to a different sub-forum if more appropriate.

Originally posted in the community:
This is probably a relatively complicated one, but also not a critical issue for us as there’s sufficient workarounds. Not something I want to go through the trouble of a support ticket with at this time. Hoping a community member can make the seemingly complicated uncomplicated.

Veeam 12.1. We have a number of systems in our environment that we use the Veeam Agent for Windows to back up. We are primarily on Nutanix AHV for our virtualization. The backups seem to work just fine. When doing some recent restore testing, we noticed something. The goal of the restore testing was to test restoring these agent backups to our Nutanix AHV cluster.

When using “Restore entire VM to Nutanix AHV...” option, during the wizard when I get to the storage container page, it shows the computer, but with no disks. What I then found was that this “no disk” symptom also occurs if I use the “Instant Recovery to Nutanix AHV”, but it actually gives an error message of “The following machines have no disks, use the Entire VM restore option instead.”

Now, the other variable is that the machines I was testing above are Windows Workstation SKUs like Windows 10. But if I select other systems we’re backing up via the Agent which are Windows Server SKUs (Windows 2016 for example), the wizards for both Entire VM restore to AHV and Instant Recovery to AHV both show the disks.

So now I turn it over - what’s going on? Is there something I’m not aware of? Is this a known limitation? A bug? Do we need to configure something on Windows workstations which is there by default for Servers?
A couple other thoughts not in the original post above I'll add:
  • I wonder if this is appearing as a feature that should work for restore to AHV but shouldn't. In the right-click restore context menu, there is no VMware-equivalent "Restore entire VM..." option. So maybe I'm trying to do something that shouldn't work. But at the same time, I found mention in the AHV help center documentation that it can restore from the "Agent" platforms, so I don't know what to make of this.
  • I have another issue to do with restores to AHV active in another support case and I intend to upgrade from 12.1.0.2131 to 12.1.1.56 early next week. So who knows, maybe this will all be resolved by then.
ybarrap2003
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Re: Veeam Windows Agent Restore Confusion

Post by ybarrap2003 »

Please see my response in community forums about the VirtIO drivers for restoring to AHV and doing Instant VM Recovery to AHV.If you have other issues please open up a support ticket.

https://community.veeam.com/discussion- ... #post60742
HYF_JE
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Re: Veeam Windows Agent Restore Confusion

Post by HYF_JE »

So as part of troubleshooting a different issue/ticket, today I upgraded VBR to 12.1.1.56 from 12.1.0.2131.

Now, I'm able to restore Windows agent (workstation/client SKU) backups to Nutanix AHV without issues, and a handful of visual bugs no longer occur. Was the upgrade coincidental and would I've gotten the same thing from simply rebooting everything in my Veeam environment? I don't know, but it is weird.
ybarrap2003
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Re: Veeam Windows Agent Restore Confusion

Post by ybarrap2003 »

Glad you sorted things out.
ronnmartin61
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Re: Veeam Windows Agent Restore Confusion

Post by ronnmartin61 »

@HYF_JE if you're willing please go ahead and open a case for this as we would like to look at the logs for the prior restore failures...
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