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Snapshots (replays) and virtual machine backups
58 Dell EMC SC Series: Best Practices with VMware vSphere | 2060-M-BP-V
Once the datastore has been resignatured, the snap datastore is accessible.
The datastores tab showing the snapshot datastore
The recovery datastore is now designated with snap-xxxxxxxx-originalname. From this tab, the datastore
can be browsed to perform the recovery using one of the methods listed below.
Note: All prior tasks in this section can be automated by using the recovery functionality in the SC Series
vSphere Client Plug-ins. More information about how to obtain the plug-in is in appendix B.
14.2.1 Recovering a file from a virtual disk
To recover a file from within a virtual disk on this snap datastore:
1. Select Edit Settings for the virtual machine.
2. Choose Add an Existing Hard Disk.
3. Select Use an Existing Virtual Disk.
4. Browse to select the virtual disk to recover from and browse the snap datastore for the virtual disk
containing the data to be recovered.
5. From within the operating system, assign a drive letter to the virtual disk and recover, copy, or move
the file back to its original location.
6. After completing the file recovery, remove the recovered virtual disk from the virtual machine before
unmapping or deleting the view volume.
14.2.2 Recovering an entire virtual disk
To recover an entire virtual disk from the snap datastore:
1. Browse to the virtual disk to be recovered.
2. Right-click the virtual disk and select Move to.
3. Using the wizard, browse to the destination datastore and folder, and click OK.
If a VMDK file is being moved back to its original location, remember that the virtual machine must be
powered off to overwrite the virtual disk. Depending on the size of the virtual disk, this operation may take
anywhere between several minutes to several hours to finish.
Note: Alternatively, the old VMDK can be removed from the virtual machine. The recovered virtual disk can
be re-added to the virtual machine. Then Storage vMotion can be used to move the virtual disk back to the
original datastore while the VM is powered on.