Script Instant Recovery of 6 VM's

[Fizzer]

I have a sharepoint farm which we will need to restore items, lists libraries, sites and site collecitons from. It seems that the quickest way to get all 6 VM's (1xDC, 1xSQL, 4xSharepoint) up and running on an isolated network is to use instant recovery. Because I can't set up an instant recovery 'job' in the UI (new feature please! ) I'll need to script it.

So what I need is a script that will prompt for the restore point, then start all 6 from that point in an isolated environment. Then I guess it would be handy if we could mount a 'helper' datastore to one of the VM's so data could be copied back to the live environment.

I hope this is enough info, if anyone could help with this I'd be very grateful!
Cheers
Andy

[ThomasMc]

Sounds easy enough, let me have a poke about and I'll get back to you, v6 I assume?

[ThomasMc]

on having another ponder, wouldn't using a surebackup job to spin up all 6 and then mounting a disk to one of them be a better option? scripted of course

[Fizzer]

I have tried surebackup, there are a few issues with being able to communicate with the guests and confirm their roles. I'm going to raise a support case for that seperately, however even if that did work it seems that the surebackup job starts all the VM's in sequence, I really need to mount all the VM's as fast as possible.
I've had a fiddle but it's not working (yet)

$rp = Get-VBRRestorePoint -Backup ((Get-VBRBackup)[2])
$server = Get-VBRServer | where {$_.Name -eq "servername"}
$res = Find-VBRResourcePool -server $server
Start-VBRInstantRecovery -RestorePoint $rp -Server $server -ResourcePool $res

Any hints?

Thanks
Andy

[ThomasMc]

Haven't tested but this should be more what your after

Code: Select all

#Job name
jobName = "LAB - DC AA"

#VM name
$vmName = "vm.vPowerCLI.Local"

#Get the server you'll be using
$irRestoreServer = Get-VBRServer -Name "DestServer"

#Resource Pool
$irRestoreRP = Find-VBRResourcePool -Server $irRestoreServer -Name "Resources"

#Get the lastest restore point
$irRestorePoint = Get-VBRBackup -Name $jobName | Get-VBRRestorePoint -Name $vmName | Sort CreationTime -Descending | Select -First 1

#Fire the Instant restore job
Start-VBRInstantRecovery -VMName $("IR-" + $vmName) -Server $irRestoreServer -ResourcePool $irRestoreRP -PowerUp:$false -NICsEnabled:$false -Reason "vPowerCLI test IR" -RunAsync

you'll then have to use PowerCLI to change the VM onto your isolated network, connect the NICs, create and mount a disk and powerup, still think SB would be faster and you can fire more than one VM at a time with it also

[Fizzer]

Thanks for the help so far Thomas, I'm curious, how can you start more than one at a time with surebackup?
My experience so far is that SB will start each VM in turn.

[Gostev]

All VMs included in the Application Group are started at once (taking into account the required boot delay, of course).
All VMs from linked backup job with be started X at a time (where X is configurable, 3 by default).

[Fizzer]

I think I'm missing something obvious, This is the description of the Application Group from the UI:
"Application Group defines your application dependancies by specifying the boot order of required VMs. Any application group typically includes at least a domain controller, DNS and DHCP server."

In the properties of the application group I can't find anywhere that allows me to boot multiple VMs - just the boot order...

Thanks for the help so far folks, sorry for the endless questions...

Andy

[Fizzer]

Ahh, I found what you were referring to.
I was using 'application Group' not 'Backup Jobs' tab to define which servers to boot. The 'Backup Jobs' tab has the option to power on VMs simulataniousy.

Thanks for the help.

[Fizzer]

It looks like the limitation with using the above is that the VM's are powered off immediately after successful boot.
It looks like I have three options:
a) powershell boot of all 6 VM's, followed by config changes (powercli)
b) Surebackup - use 'application group' - boot all VM's in order
c) Surebackup - use 'Backup Jobs' - boot all VM's simultaniously

Unless I've understood the functionality incorrectly:
a) is a problem because I want to be able to devolve the ability to restore sharepoint to the sharepoint admins, this might be a tad too complicated for them
b) takes a long time while you wait for each VM to boot
c) boots quickly but then shuts down each Vm immediately after a successful boot

I kinda need all VM's to boot at once, ignore all checking (if possible) and stay up until shut down.

I fear that this is going off topic (powershell) slightly, sorry for that!

Thanks again.

Andy