Restore a VM to a USB Disk

[eversys]

For test purposes, we would like to restore one of our VMs to an external USB disk and then transfer this to a test VMware server and see if the restored VM boots OK. At the moment we back up all VMs on a single VM host to a local disk repository - daily incrementals and weekly fulls. How do we restore the latest VM to our USB disk?

Thanks for your help.

[foggy]

You can use VM files restore to restore files on USB disk and then upload the files from it to the target host's datastore.

[eversys]

Thanks for your feeback. So I would simply select all VM files and restore to a specific location (USB HDD). What about the option "VM hard disks" - would that also do the job? Also, what's the difference between a "Full" and a "Rollback" Restore Point?

BTW, the test VMware server is not part of our network i.e. no contact to Veeam and in a standalone environment.

[Vitaliy S.]

Rollback is just an incremental restore point of the VM. You can restore the required VM to the NTFS formatted drive (either via VM hard disks option or entire VM). Please be aware that if you're using thin virtual disks, then these disks will automatically be converted to thick ones, because thin disks can only reside on the VMFS datastore.

[eversys]

Thanks for the clarification. If I select a rollback restore point, then I assume I will still be provided with a VM which can boot i.e. the restored files will be a combination of the last full and applicable incrementals - right?

[Vitaliy S.]

Yes, that's correct.

[eversys]

I managed to successfully restore the VM files to a USB disk without problem.

Thanks for your help.

[eversys]

I was able to boot my VM (SBS 2011) on a test VMware host. However, Windows booted in safemode (Directory Services Repair). I was not able to logon to the domain - only locally. I installed VM Tools and rebooted - all was fine.. the Server booted and domain login was possible. Is this an expected error after restoring a Veeam image?

[Vitaliy S.]

The short answer is yes, a VM reboot is required. Please review this topic on the DC recovery question > Veeam B&R v5 recovery of a domain controller

[eversys]

Thanks