Restoring a virtual machine - AWS Backup
Use the AWS Backup console to restore virtual machine recovery pointsUse the AWS Backup API, CLI, or SDK to restore virtual machines recovery points

Restoring a virtual machine

Use the AWS Backup console to restore virtual machine recovery points

You can restore a virtual machine from multiple locations in the left navigation pane of the AWS Backup console:

  • Choose Hypervisors to view recovery points for virtual machines managed by a hypervisor that is connected to AWS Backup.

  • Choose Virtual machines to view recovery points for virtual machines across all your hypervisors that are connected to AWS Backup.

  • Choose Backup vaults to view recovery points stored in a specific AWS Backup vault.

  • Choose Protected resources to view recovery points across all your AWS Backup protected resources.

If you need to restore a virtual machine that no longer has a connection with Backup gateway, choose Backup vaults or Protected resources to locate your recovery point.

AWS Backup restores of virtual machines are non-destructive. This means that AWS Backup does not overwrite existing virtual machines during a restore. Instead, it restores by deploying a new virtual machine.

Your restored virtual machine starts on your infrastructure in shutdown mode.

To restore a virtual machine to VMware, VMware Cloud on AWS, and VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts:

  1. In the Hypervisors or Virtual machines views, choose the VM name to restore. In the Protected resources view, choose the virtual machine Resource ID to restore.

  2. Choose the radial button next to the Recovery point ID to restore.

  3. Choose Restore.

  4. Choose the Restore type.

    1. Full restore restores all the virtual machine's disks.

    2. Disk-level restore restores a user-defined selection of one or more disks. Use the drop-down menu to select which disks to restore.

  5. Choose the Restore location. The options are VMware, VMware Cloud on AWS, and VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts.

  6. If you are doing a full restore, skip to the next step. If you are performing a disk-level restore, there will be a drop-down menu under VM disks. Choose one or more bootable volumes to restore.

  7. Select a Hypervisor from the dropdown menu to manage the restored virtual machine

  8. For the restored virtual machine, use your organization’s virtual machine best practices to specify its:

    1. Name

    2. Path (such as /datacenter/vm)

    3. Compute resource name (such as VMHost or Cluster)

      If a host is part of a cluster then you cannot restore to the host but only to the given cluster.

    4. Datastore

  9. For Restore role, select either the Default role (recommended) or Choose an IAM role using the dropdown menu.

  10. Choose Restore backup.

  11. Optional: Check when your restore job has the status Completed. In the left navigation menu, choose Jobs.

To restore a virtual machine to Amazon EBS:

  1. In the Hypervisors or Virtual machines views, choose the VM name to restore. In the Protected resources view, choose the virtual machine Resource ID to restore.

  2. Choose the radial button next to the Recovery point ID to restore.

  3. Choose Restore.

  4. Choose the Restore type.

    1. Disk restore restores a user-defined selection of one disk. Use the drop-down menu to select which disk to restore.

  5. Choose the Restore location as Amazon EBS.

  6. Under the VM disk dropdown menu, choose bootable volume to restore.

  7. Under EBS Volume type, choose the volume type.

  8. Choose your Availability Zone.

  9. Encryption (optional). Check the box if you choose to encrypt the EBS volume.

  10. Select your KMS key from the dropdown menu.

  11. For Restore role, select either the Default role (recommended) or Choose an IAM role using the dropdown menu.

  12. Choose Restore backup.

  13. Optional: Check when your restore job has the status Completed. In the left navigation menu, choose Jobs.

  14. Optional: Visit How do I create an LVM logical volume on an entire Amazon EBS volume? to learn more on how to mount managed volumes and access data on the restored Amazon EBS volume.

To restore a virtual machine to an Amazon EC2 instance

Restoring (or migrating) a virtual machine to EC2 requires a license. By default, an AWS will include a license (charges apply). For more information, see Licensing options in the Amazon EC2 VM Import/Export User Guide.

  1. In the Hypervisors or Virtual machines views, choose the VM name to restore. In the Protected resources view, choose the virtual machine Resource ID to restore.

  2. Choose the radial button next to the Recovery point ID to restore.

  3. Choose Restore.

  4. Choose the Restore type.

    1. Full restore restores the file system completely, including the root-level folder and files.

  5. Choose the Restore location as Amazon EC2.

  6. Under the dropdown menu Instance type, choose the combination of compute and memory necessary for your new instance.

    Note

    Choose an instance that has compute and memory to match or exceed that of your original machine; otherwise performance will be affected.

  7. Select the Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) that defines the virtual networking environment.

  8. Select the subnet group. This is a range of IP addresses in your virtual private cloud which can be used to isolate distinct Amazon EC2 instances from each other.

  9. Specify the security groups you want to use to determine firewall rules for your instance traffic.

  10. For Restore role, select either the Default role (recommended) or Choose an IAM role using the dropdown menu.

  11. Choose Restore backup.

Check when your restore job has the status Completed. In the left navigation menu, choose Jobs.

Use the AWS Backup API, CLI, or SDK to restore virtual machines recovery points

Use StartRestoreJob.

You can specify the following metadata during any virtual machine restore:

This example shows how to conduct a full restore to VMware:

'{"RestoreTo":"VMware","HypervisorArn":"arn:aws:backup-gateway:us-east-1:209870788375:hypervisor/hype-9B1AB1F1","VMName":"name","VMPath":"/Labster/vm","ComputeResourceName":"Cluster","VMDatastore":"vsanDatastore","DisksToRestore":"[{\"DiskId\":\"2000\",\"Label\":\"Hard disk 1\"}]","vmId":"vm-101"}'

To restore to an Amazon EC2 instance, only "RestoreTo":"EC2Instance" needs to be specified. All other attributes will be defaulted.

Note

Restoring (or migrating) a virtual machine to EC2 requires a license. By default, AWS will include a license (charges apply). For more information, see Licensing options in the Amazon EC2 VM Import/Export User Guide.