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2019 WIndows Server Backup of Hyper-V machine to alternate Hypervisor restores with wrong path

Nat Knowles 0 Reputation points
2023-02-24T10:55:02.06+00:00

Hello - hope someone can help.

Testing restores of Hyper-V machines with Windows Server backup. When I restore to a differnt Hypervisor using the restore to an alternative location option - the machine is imported into Hyper-V and teh job reports as a success.

However, when we try to start the machine or access settings we get an error. Its clear that the error is related to the path of the machine. The machine is restored to a path which translates to...

The default VM location > VM Machine name > A drive letter with an underscore representing the original drive the machine was backed up from > The original vm location > the vm files.

E.G.

D:\My Virtual Machines\Test_VM\D\My Virtual Machines\Test_VM\

Correcting the path and mocing the VM files to the root of

D:\My Virtual Machines\Test_VM

Will allow me to start the machine. But why is Windows Backup adding these extra folders into the path and how do I stop it?

Thanks

Hyper-V
Hyper-V
A Windows technology providing a hypervisor-based virtualization solution enabling customers to consolidate workloads onto a single server.
2,636 questions
Windows Server Backup
Windows Server Backup
Windows Server: A family of Microsoft server operating systems that support enterprise-level management, data storage, applications, and communications.Backup: A duplicate copy of a program, a disk, or data, made either for archiving purposes or for safeguarding valuable files from loss should the active copy be damaged or destroyed.
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  1. Michael Durkan 12,196 Reputation points MVP
    2023-02-25T19:53:24.83+00:00

    Hi

    this is a "by-design" thing that I've seen before with System Center DPM (Data Protection Manager) as well.

    As you know, if you try to restore the VM to its original location, it will shut down the existing VM (if running) and overwrite it.

    If you restore to an alternate location, its going to try to restore the full folder structure of where the VM was previously. So as you have seen, if you try to restore the VM to "D:\My Virtual Machines\Test_VM", its going to assume that this is the root folder of your structure and will restore it to "D:\My Virtual Machines\Test_VM\D\My Virtual Machines\Test_VM" even though its registers the VM on the Hypervisor and the config file is still pointing to the original location.

    So in short, restore the VM to "D:" instead of the original path and it should all work for you first time! As always, make sure to test this with a non-production environment first!

    Hope this helps,

    Thanks

    Michael Durkan

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