Challenges of Instant Recovery While VM is Consolidating

Can I perform instant recovery while VM is consolidating

We are currently consolidating a VM which is currently turned off and the process will take hours. Is it possible to spin up an instant recovery VM in Veeam while this process continues? Or will this cause contention with the consolidation process?

In the Veeam software environment, it is technically possible in many cases to merge VMs and start instant VM recovery at the same time. The architecture of Veeam allows for a certain degree of parallelism, with the Instant Recovery functionality focusing on using the backup data to quickly mount the VM disks and get it up and running in a short period of time, usually independently of the VM consolidation. This process is usually independent of VM consolidation.

Conflicts in Veeam instant recovery while VM is consolidating

Although it is technically feasible to spin up an instant recovery VM while the VM is consolidating, there are some conflicts in the process.

Next, this part introduces several issues that may be caused by executing instant recovery while VM is consolidating, please pay attention to these aspects in the practical usage environment.

💡Resource contention:

If the server has limited hardware resources (e.g., CPU, memory, storage I/O, etc.), performing two operations at the same time - merging VMs and starting an instant recovery VM may result in resource contention.

For example, the consolidation VM may take up a lot of storage I/O bandwidth to read and write data, while the instant recovery VM startup also needs to read data from the backup storage to load the disk, which may degrade the performance of the storage system, causing both operations to become slow, and may even result in an error such as a storage I/O wait timeout.

✍Data consistency:

Data consistency issues can be triggered if the merged VMs and the instant recovery VMs involve the same storage resources or shared data.

For example, during the process of merging VMs, some data blocks in storage may be being rewritten or reorganized, and an instant recovery VM that accesses these data blocks at the same time may read inconsistent data, which can lead to application errors or system failures after the VM boots.

🚩Network resources:

Starting the instant recovery VM and the consolidation VM at the same time may compete for network resources. If the network bandwidth is limited, both operations may require a large amount of network resources to transfer data (e.g., the instant recovery VM may need to be started by downloading data from a backup repository over the network, the Consolidation VM may need to synchronize configuration information over the network, etc.), which may lead to network congestion and affect the normal conduct of operations.

Powerful and easy-to-use backup and instant recovery tool

AOMEI Cyber Backup is equipped with Instant Recovery technology, which can quickly recover data within minutes, allowing users to quickly take over the system, greatly reducing system downtime and ensuring business continuity.

Meanwhile, it can provide centralized data backup and recovery protection for different types of workloads, such as VMware, Hyper-V, Windows PCs and servers, SQL server, etc., to meet the needs of diverse IT environments of enterprises.

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Easy steps to perform instant recovery for virtual machines

Note:
* The instant restore feature is applicable to backup points of ESXi virtual machines. AOMEI Cyber Backup must be installed on Windows Server 2012 or higher versions of the operating system.
* The backup points of the virtual machine must be stored on the local disk.

Step 1. Create VMware ESXi VMs Backup and then start VM instant recovery.

Step 2. Create New Instant Recovery as following:

✔ Click "Task" > "Instant Recovery" > "New Instant Recovery". Here we take "Restore from task" for an example.

✔ Select Source and choose the virtual machine and backup version.

✔ Select the device to be restored to in "Restore to". Choose the target device.

✔ Set the hardware settings for the new virtual machine, such as CPU quantity, CPU Cores and memory size.

✔ Enter a name for the new virtual machine.

✔ Click "Start Restore" to start the instant restore.

Step 3. Migrate VM to production environment as following:

✔ After creating vm instant recovery, click Start Migration on details page to return backup to production environment.

Conclusion

Although it is theoretically possible to perform both operations in Veeam, factors such as system resources and data consistency need to be carefully considered to avoid possible conflicts. Before actual operation, it is best to evaluate the system resources and verify it in a test environment.