User manual

131 Copyright © Acronis International GmbH, 2002-2016
6 Conversion to a virtual machine
Acronis Backup offers a number of ways of converting a disk backup into a virtual machine. This
section helps you choose the method that best fits your needs and provides step-by-step instructions
for conversion.
6.1 Conversion methods
Depending on your needs, you can choose among the following conversion methods:
a) Make the conversion a part of a backup plan
When to use.
 If you want the backup and the conversion to be executed on a schedule. This helps you
maintain a standby virtual server ready to power on in case your physical server fails.
 If you do not need to adjust the resulting virtual machine settings.
How to perform. When creating a backup plan (p. 33), enable conversion of a backup to a virtual
machine (p. 133).
b) Recover the backed-up disks or volumes to the "New virtual machine" destination
When to use.
 If you want to do the conversion once or occasionally, as required.
 If you want to do a lossless physical to virtual migration. In this case, you boot the original
machine from bootable media, back up the machine in the off-line state and immediately
recover the machine from the resulting backup.
 If you need to adjust the resulting virtual machine settings. You may want to add or remove
disks, choose the disk provisioning mode, change the volume sizes and their location on the
disks, and more.
How to perform. Follow the steps described in "Recovery to the 'New virtual machine'
destination" (p. 136).
c) Recover the backed-up disks or volumes to a manually created virtual machine by using
bootable media
When to use.
 If you want to create a machine directly on a virtualization server, rather than import it.
Tip. With Agent for VMware or Agent for Hyper-V, a virtual machine can be created directly
on a respective virtualization server by using methods (a) and (b).
 If you need to recreate dynamic volumes on a Windows machine.
 If you need to recreate logical volumes or software RAID on a Linux machine.
How to perform. Follow the steps described in “Recovery to a manually created virtual machine”
(p. 139).
6.2 Conversion to an automatically created virtual
machine
This section describes the conversion methods (p. 131) in which Acronis Backup automatically
creates a new virtual machine: