How to restore vCenter VM?

[pufferdude]

I have a good backup of my Virtual Center server, which itself is a VM. However, I cannot figure out how (or if it's even possible) to restore this VM (the current vCenter is corrupt and won't start), since Veeam Backup can't log IN to vCenter

It seems that Veeam Backup should be able to connect to the ESX host directly and restore the VM, but I cannot make that work, because attempting to add the ESX host to veeam backup results in a "this host already exists" (paraphrasing) error.

Is there any way to do this? Perhaps installing veeam backup on a different windows machine, and instead of adding the virtual center in the first place, just add the ESX host I want to restore to? But if I do that, can I just point at the backup file that was created on my other install of veeam?

Any advice appreciated!

[tsightler]

Use the IP address of the ESX host rather than the hostname. That will work around the "this host already exists" message and should allow you to restore the vCenter server.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Jim,

Yes, Tom, is correct about that, you can add your ESX host by ip address to be able to restore vCenter to the host. By the way, have you used VSS integration module while doing a backup of vCenter? To be sure that all applications are in consistent state it should be enabled at advanced configuration of job settings.
But If you do this and add vCenter under vCenter node, you will face the situation when your vCenter is freezed, and when the command to make a snapshot comes from Veeam Backup and Replication, vCenter cannot make a snapshot, cause it is in a freezed state, so you get a create snapshot timeout. To workaround that please have a look at the following topic at our forums:

http://www.veeam.com/forums/viewtopic.p ... 44&start=0