need FLR restore from GPT disk

[pnikies]

hello, this a request for new feature
our customers need to file level restore GPT disk and it's not supported with veeam backup
it's more and more critical. Will this feature happen in near future ?

thank you

[Gostev]

Hi Roman, no this feature is not planned for near future. We are monitoring the need, but demand has been pretty much non-existent (very occasional requests). There is simply no sense to deploy VM with GPT disks today. The only benefit of GPT is support for >2TB disks, but VMware has 2TB VMDK size limit today anyway. Thanks.

[tsightler]

You can perform a file level restore by leveraging the SureBackup or Instant Recovery feature, but I will that not having this feature seems strange. Yes there are only limited advantages to GPT for filesystems less than 2TB, but some advantages do exist (redundant copies of the partition table and CRC32 to detect problems with the table, improved alignment capabilities), and some VM's were created with GPT as physical machines and came over with P2V. Some companies also standardize on GPT for 64bit servers since this appears to be the future.

[bc07]

Please put GPT support on the roadmap!
We made at some I/O intensive VM's the data disk to GPT to get rid of the performance degration what you have with a non-aligned MBR disk.
Sure you could go through this hassle.... http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929491

[Gostev]

Oh, it is on the roadmap... there are just way too many other pending features too

[alexfeig1]

Agreed, I'd love to see this.

In my situation I actually had to go out and buy Acronis Disk Director to convert GPT to MBR (There's a free tool that'll do it as well, but you know how it is!).

[bc07]

Thanks Alex, for the tip with Acronis. I'll try that. I saw the free tool from Paragon, didn't look very promising (were some comment of problems and haven't releases any updates for a year).

[alexfeig1]

No problem. If you want to check out the free tool (which actually worked in testing), it's called gdisk.

http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/mbr2gpt.html

[bc07]

Thanks. I converted the GPT disks to MBR with Acronis last weekend. I had to install the software on the server because the Linux boot media does not work (Stuck at booting with Starting Acronis Loader). I haven't had time yet to try a WINPE Acronis boot media.
Now of course the partitions are no longer aligned right. I found here an article to align paritions without removing everything from the disk: http://www.tuxyturvy.com/blog/index.php ... -Data.html but I haven't tried it yet.

[tsightler]

That's my article. It works, but is tedious. It's one of the most hit articles on my site.

I'm curious, why does converting from GPT to MBR cause the alignment to change? Does the Acronis tool actually move the partition? I would have thought it would have simply left the partition in place and wrote a new MBR which wouldn't actually change the alignment if the partition was previously aligned.

[bc07]

Small world Great article. It is probably less time consuming than to move terrabytes of data around.
I checked after converting and it was not properly aligned. It does not matter that much in my case because we'll install a new Exchange and file server in a few months anyway.

[Davd]

Veeam.... please try to prioritize GPT FLR support on the roadmap... Our infra guys are deploying lots of GPT servers and a simple file restore requres me to boot the server in Virtual Lab...

[Gostev]

OK

[kurt]

[Merged into existing discussion]

I found out the hard way that FLR does not work on GPT partitions. This is a huge disappointment.

I have a 1.25 TB drive with about 900GB in use. I need to restore one tiny file. What is the quickest way for me to restore that file?

[tsightler]

Our solution to this is typically to perform an Instant Recovery to an isolated network. We have Windows host which has a secondary NIC connected to an isolated vSwitch. We perform an Instant Recovery and connect this host to this same isolated vSwitch. That way these two systems can see each other and you can copy the file off, but the Instant Recovery doesn't interfere with the running system.

There are other similar way to accomplish this with virtual lab functionality.

[kurt]

I tried instant recovery but then I got an error "Original server is still online" and some message that it could corrupt my running vm or cause conflicts even though I renamed it and did not tick the connect to network option. So are there any other ways to restore my files? I'm new to veeam. I tested both veeam the the other v.... backup software and I must say that the competition did not have this issue. FLR from GPT partition worked fine with competition software. Lucky for veeam I already purchased their software but I'm a bit disappointed.

Is it ok to enable Windows shadow copies on my virtual machine so that I can use that restore method in the future? Either that or I need to convert to MBR sigh.

[tsightler]

This is just a warning that if you were to connect the Instant Recovered VM to the network while the original VM was powered on you could cause issues. As long as you are careful this is a non-event.

Interesting that you tested this feature on the competitor product but not Veeam prior to making the purchase.

[kurt]

I'm pretty sure it worked on the other product as I did test restores with both but not the same VMs so I had no idea GPT was a limitation of FLR. My trial ran out of both and I had to make a decision...

Anyway, I called Veeam support and there is a very easy work around. All you have to do is choose Other OS instead of Windows and the FLR wizard will create a virtual machine and you can then access your files on the GPT partition. Worked like a charm. I'm surprised no one mentioned that in this thread yet.

It would be cool if there was a Windows 7 client that could read \ mount the VBK and VRB files.

[tsightler]

Well, I thought about mentioning it because I was pretty sure that worked, but I couldn't remember for sure and wanted to go try it first. I think it will work for basic GPT disk, but not dynamic disks with multiple segments.

[nguyent]

[moved into existing discussion]

The Veeam support tech. told me that File Level Restore that does not support GPT or Dymanic Disks. Does everyone have problem with it? I had problem with it before for MBR, but it works fine now for MBR and GPT.
Thanks
Tan

[talderfer]

[moved into existing discussion]

Hello,

I am trying to recover files on a GPT disk. I know that this is not supported by Veeam. My question is how can I mount the restored VMDK file and view it's contents? Then, copy out the file that I need restored. The VMDK file is restored to the physical Veeam server. Do I need to spin up a VM using vmware player, then add the vmdk as an existing volume? Or is there a more simplistic approach? Thanks

Regards,

Tim

[Gostev]

Tim, the process is described in the sticky FAQ topic, see the last bullet in the Instant FLR section. Thanks.

[talderfer]

Thanks, Gostev.

I found two solutions that work. 1) Instant VM recovery. Kind of a hassle because copying the restored file out of the VM is a little time consuming. 2) I installed VMware Player on my Veeam Server with a Windows 7 VM. Then, ran a "VM files (VMDK, VMX) restore and restored to local Veeam server. Spin up the Windows 7 VM and mount the restored VMDK as an existing virtual disk. Now, all you need to do it copy the file from the windows 7 VM to the restored location.

--Tim

[Gostev]

Hi Tim, I believe you misunderstood something. You do not need to copy anything anywhere for (1), you just mount published VMDK files from vPower NFS datastore to an existing Windows VM that is running on ESX(i) host... this process is truly instant. Unlike your second approach, that involves actually restoring VM files to local disk (which can take a few hours for very large VM, because hard disks can only read/write as fast). Thanks.

[kurt]

Anyway, I called Veeam support and there is a very easy work around. All you have to do is choose Other OS instead of Windows and the FLR wizard will create a virtual machine and you can then access your files on the GPT partition. Worked like a charm. I'm surprised no one mentioned that in this thread yet.

This is no longer working with other OS restore. It loads up but when I try and access the disk, I get an error "Cannot mount sdb1: "Unknown filesystem"

I'm using the latest version 5.0.2.230 64 bit

[kurt]

I am trying to recover files on a GPT disk. I know that this is not supported by Veeam. My question is how can I mount the restored VMDK file and view it's contents? Then, copy out the file that I need restored.

I have the same question. I used instant recovery to restore the VM but how do I get my files out without connecting it to the network?

[kurt]

Hi Tim, I believe you misunderstood something. You do not need to copy anything anywhere for (1), you just mount published VMDK files from vPower NFS datastore to an existing Windows VM that is running on ESX(i) host... this process is truly instant. Unlike your second approach, that involves actually restoring VM files to local disk (which can take a few hours for very large VM, because hard disks can only read/write as fast). Thanks.

This worked. I used the Instant Recovery feature. It still took 10 to 15 minutes. Once it was ready, I added a virtual disk to another vm using existing vmdk and chose the disk from the veeam vpower datastore. I wasn't sure what vPower NFS datastore was until I tried this. It worked so I'm happy for now. I just wish instant FLR worked with GPT in the future. Thanks

[Gostev]

Yep, we are working on it. Although the VM publishing process should take under 1 minute, no matter of VM size that you are publishing, so you may want to troubleshoot this anyway if you are planning to use vPower functionality down the road. Feel free to open a support case for investigation. Thanks!