Logical Volume groups and File Level Restore

[scott.lundberg]

We are currently using a Veeam 6.5.128 on a VMWare setup. I have a VM running RedHat EL 5.x that is our mail server. This is a large mailserver running IMAP and because of the large disk space requirements, is using Logical Volume groups using lvm.
The problem is this:
If I want to restore a single file or single directory from a Veeam backup, I am unable to do this with Guest Files (Other OS) because of LVM. The "Guest Files" VM is able to boot and it detects the vmdks that comprise my Logical Volume, but it tries to mount each vmdk as it's own volume and throws a bunch of errors about the file system being corrupted.
Is there a way to create a logical volume within the "Guest Files" VM?
Some other way to get access to individual files in the VM other than a complete restore?

I can do an instant VM recovery, but then that machine is completely isolated (can't have two machines with the same hostname etc on the same network) and I have no way to get files from it easily. Has anyone come up with a good solution for this kind of an environment? Is there a generic AIR plugin that could work in this case? I don't mind installing an agent on the VM if that's what it takes to make this work easily.

Thanks,
Scott

[tsightler]

LVM is supported and I've never seen this particular issue with it, so you might want to open a support case.

As far as alternate options, you can use the IVMR as you mentioned, power on the VM "isolated" but then simply attach a small "extra" VMDK to it, format it with a simply ext3 filesysttem, copy the files to this small disk, then detach it, mount it on the original host, and copy the files to their destination. Not super, but not complex, and it works.

Another option is to use U-AIR to boot the system in question in a vLab. If you provide a static IP mapping you can then just use SCP/rsync to copy the files out of the lab copy of the VM.

Finally, assuming you have LVM knowledge, you could also use IVMR, but then attach the VMDKs to a running Linux system in your environment (not the original VM) and mount them, then copy the files to the original system.

[scott.lundberg]

Thanks for the suggestions. I will check in with support and also look at the U-AIR product to see if that's a good alternative. I would love to be able to boot this machine into vLab and just SCP the files.

[tsightler]

U-AIR is a feature of Veeam, assuming you have at enterprise license. It automates the startup of the vLab, but you can also just configure the vLab and start the lab manually, then copy the files. Pretty simply once you get it setup.