Release Notes

46 Dell Virtual Storage Manager: Installation Considerations and Local Data Protection | 2079-BP-V-VSM
Note: VMs contain VMware snapshots and possibly memory state from the snapshot process. During the process,
VSM does not revert or delete these snapshots to protect the original VM. These snapshots need to be managed
manually once the VMs are isolated.
6.7 Advanced cloning in selective data recovery
There are times when data restoration needs to be more granular than at the level of the individual datastore or
individual virtual machine. The idea behind selective data recovery is creating clones, bringing the information online
and then attaching the data drive of the VM from the snapshot back to the original VM. Using clones for this is
preferred over bringing a snapshot online. By taking a clone of the snapshot, the original PS Series snapshot data is not
modified. If the original PS Series snapshot is online, the data integrity for recovery could be changed (or deleted) by
accident.
There are multiple options for selective data recovery, but they all revolve around mounting a point-in-time version of
the data disk to a VM (usually the original). In order for this to work, the VM OS must support the ability to hot add
data disks. The other option is to have a temporary or standby recovery VM available that can have data drives
mounted to it and then used to find the files to recover and copy them back to the original location.
The process is similar to creating a clone but with some additional steps.
1. Find the snapshot containing the data that needs to be recovered. Right click and choose Clone from
Snapshot.
Note: Even if you are trying to restore just one file, the Smart Clone operation could cause multiple datastores to be
cloned and mounted. These will need to be deleted using Datastore Manager when the process is finished.
2. Follow the same process as creating a clone from a snapshot. Once the cloned datastores are scanned and
found, the data drive can be attached to the VM or recover the VM for file restoration.
3. Right click the VM receiving the recovery data disk and click Edit Settings.
4. Click the new device drop-down menu, choose New Existing Hard Disk, and click Add.