Restore a backup of ESXi 6.0 system on 5.5 (other VM hardw)

[Joris85]

Hello,

We are in some critical situation here where we backupped our ESXi 6.0 system before shipping it out, but we cannot restore the .vbk file on our local system because the "on premise backup system" we have in place is only ESXi 5.5
No problem I thought, just let me use VMware Convertor... but that offcourse will not work because I have .vbk files (VEEAM) and not VMware files.
So I am completely stuck with these useless backups? Is there any way for me to get around this fast?

Best Regards,

Joris

24/06/2016 12:08:23 Error Restore job failed Error: VM hardware version 11 is not supported by destination host (version 5.5)

[pidthepiper]

Could you not install esxi 6 some random hardware and the n restore to that and then do your v2v? or sneakily change the hardware level in the vmx file and add it back into the inventory?

or install esxi6 on a sub stick get the vms onto the datastore and then dos ome trickery?

[Vitaliy S.]

If the VM disks are not large, you can try to use VM files restore wizard to recover your VM from the backup file (VBK). After that you should be able to use VMware Converter.