Disaster Recovery Guide

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Table of Contents

1 Introduction........................................................................................................................................ 1

1.1 Definitions...................................................................................................................................... 1

1.2 Assumptions.................................................................................................................................. 1

1.3 Planning for Disaster Recovery.....................................................................................................2

1.3.1 Cold recovery........................................................................................................................... 2

1.3.2 Warm Recovery....................................................................................................................... 2

1.3.3 Clustered Recovery.................................................................................................................3

2 Infrastructure Backup........................................................................................................................ 4

2.1 Creating a Backup Plan.................................................................................................................4

2.2 Backing Up Hosts and Library Servers..........................................................................................4

2.2.1 Windows Server Backup..........................................................................................................5

2.3 Backing Up VMM Servers.............................................................................................................6

3 Infrastructure Restoration.................................................................................................................7

3.1 Preparing a Test Environment.......................................................................................................7

3.2 Restoring Virtual Machines............................................................................................................7

4 Appendix A – Using DPM in a Virtualized Environment..................................................................8

4.1 Application Awareness..................................................................................................................8

4.2 Deploying DPM to Protect Hyper-V...............................................................................................9

4.3 Recovering Virtual Machines.......................................................................................................11

4.3.1 Recovering a Virtual Machine to its Original Location............................................................11

4.3.2 Recovering a VM to a Network Share....................................................................................12

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1 INTRODUCTION

Microsoft® Services Server Virtualization with Advanced Management focuses on providing the guidance to plan, architect, and migrate physical servers to virtual machines.

Server Virtualization with Advanced Management is broken down into the following two main phases of delivery:

Discovery and Assessment Planning and Deployment

This delivery guide focuses on an initial approach to disaster recovery planning and the recommended procedures related to backup and restore of the virtualized environment, as part of the second phase of Planning and Deployment.

1.1 Definitions

Business Continuity Planning is an interdisciplinary concept used to create and validate a practiced logistical plan for how an organization will recover and restore partially or completely interrupted critical functions within a predetermined time after a disaster or extended disruption. The logistical plan is called a Business Continuity Plan.

A disaster is any natural or human-induced situation that causes a serious disruption in customers’ computing services. Disruptions can range from major natural disasters to simple power outages in a data center building. A disaster can result in data loss, communication loss, or machine failure, making services unavailable to users and applications.

Disaster Recovery (DR) is a subset of a Business Continuity Plan and comprises process, policies, and procedures of restoring computing resources and its related services after an event has disrupted those services. The computing resources can be physical servers, external storage, communication links and appliances, applications, or virtual machines.

1.2 Assumptions

This document takes the consultant through the disaster recovery planning for the virtualized environment. It assumes that the virtualization technology is Hyper-V™ on Windows Server® 2008 and that the management solution for the virtualized environment is Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008.

It also assumes that the customer has a compatible backup solution in place. The compatible backup solution should support the Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) for point-in-time copies of Virtual Machines. If the customer does not have a backup solution that is suitable for the virtualized environment, or has already deployed Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM), the consultant can refer to Appendix A for specific DPM guidance.

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1.3 Planning for Disaster Recovery

Prior to selecting a Disaster Recovery strategy, the Disaster Recovery Plan should refer to the organization's Business Continuity Plan, which should indicate the key metrics of Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) for various business processes, such as the process to run payroll, generate an order, and so on. The metrics specified for the business processes must then be mapped to the underlying IT systems and infrastructure that support those processes.

Once the RTO and RPO metrics have been mapped to IT infrastructure, the DR planner can determine the most suitable recovery strategy for each system. An important note here, however, is that the business ultimately sets the IT budget and therefore the RTO and RPO metrics need to fit with the available budget. While most business unit heads would like zero data loss and zero time loss, the cost associated with that level of protection may make the desired high availability solutions impractical.

The disaster recovery strategy for the virtualized environment can be one of the following, depending on the RTO.

1.3.1 Cold recovery

In this scenario, there is no need for immediate restoration of business processes and functions for a period of time.

If the disaster is restricted to loss of storage or a physical server, the virtual machines can be restored with backup data as soon as the necessary resources are available.

If the disaster affects a whole data center and there is no stand-by site, the restore timeframe depends on the availability of an off-site backup and the time to assemble a secondary site with the necessary computational resources.

1.3.2 Warm Recovery

In this scenario the services provided by virtual machines must be recovered within a predetermined (not short) timescale to prevent impacts to the business process.

The warm stand-by strategy requires the availability of the necessary resources within the predetermined timescale minus the expected restore time. For example, if there is a storage failure, the planning must enforce that the time to replace the storage plus the time to restore the affected virtual machines to the storage is within the predetermined timescale.

If the disaster affects a whole data center, there is a need for a stand-by site with the necessary computational resources to provide the RPO for the selected business processes. The best practices in this scenario recommend a replica of the virtualized infrastructure (VMM, VMM library and physical servers) in the stand-by site. This way the recovery timeframe will depend only on the virtual machines restore time and the network redirection procedures.

The network redirection procedures are necessary to redirect all network clients to the restored virtual machines in the stand-by site. This is required whenever the virtual machines have new IP addresses in the stand-by site.

In disaster recovery, one of the biggest challenges is the complexity and cost of maintaining identical server configurations across both data centers. But when virtual machine configuration files are replicated or periodically copied from the production data center to the recovery site, it reduces the

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need to rigorously monitor system configurations between data centers. The system configurations are always in sync because any changes are continuously replicated to the recovery site.

In many cases, an organization may elect to use an outsourced disaster recovery provider to provide a stand-by site and systems rather than using their own remote facilities.

1.3.3 Clustered Recovery

This scenario requires immediate restoration of services following any irrecoverable incident. This may imply instant recovery or recovery in a short timescale.

This strategy is built upon the stand-by site from the warm stand-by scenario, but it requires data replication between the sites. There are many replication options from synchronous to asynchronous to periodic replication to satisfy a wide range of recovery point objectives.

Immediate recovery can be accomplished through virtual machine failover or rapid restart at the stand-by site. It requires more expensive technologies such as geographically dispersed clustering or maintaining identical hot standby servers with synchronous storage replication between the sites.

Although the failover to a hot stand-by site using a replicated set of the virtual machine files does not require a traditional backup, it is recommended to create a backup set of the replicated files in disk and/or tape and store it in a third off-site location.

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2 INFRASTRUCTURE BACKUP

It is important to develop and implement a comprehensive backup plan for protecting VMM 2008 data, including the VMM server, hosts, virtual machines, and library servers.

Important

Virtual machine checkpoints should not be considered backups for disaster recovery. Checkpoints do not create full duplicates of the hard disk contents, nor do they copy data to a separate volume. A checkpoint can serve as temporary backup before an operating system is updated so that it can be rolled back. A backup application should be used to back up and recover your data in case of catastrophic data loss.

2.1 Creating a Backup Plan

The principal factor to consider when planning data backup is the ability to quickly recover the virtualized environment if data is lost or corrupted.

The procedure for data protection must be chosen according to the Disaster Recovery strategy:

Backups made to tape and sent off-site at regular intervals (preferably daily). Backups made to disk on-site and automatically copied to off-site disk, or made directly to off-

site disk. Replication of data to an off-site location, which overcomes the need to restore the data. High availability systems that keep both the data and system replicated off-site, enabling

continuous access to systems and data.

Key candidates for protection are files that change frequently or are frequently accessed. The backup plan must include:

The VMM 2008 servero The Microsoft SQL Server® database (user accounts and configuration data)o The job history

Hostso Virtual machines

Library servers datao VHDso ISO imageso Scripts

2.2 Backing Up Hosts and Library Servers

A virtualized environment requires the same attention to backup planning as the physical environment does. Unlike a physical server, for which the internal system resource usage does not impact other workloads, a virtual machine shares hardware resources with other virtual machines. Therefore, the virtual machine backup schedule must minimize the impact on performance and application availability.

It is recommended to use VMM 2008, DPM, or a third-party backup suite that takes advantage of the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to make a copy of the host and library data for backup.

For library servers, much of the library data actually resides in the VMM database. Templates, hardware profiles, and guest operating-system profiles are not represented as files on the library share. Therefore, this information is backed up with the VMM database. Library resources that are represented by files can be backed up by using the customer’s backup solution.

Virtual machines are files. As such, virtual machines can be copied, backed up, replicated, and moved like files. When the virtual machine is active, its files will be in use. This is why it is important to use a

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VSS-based backup solution. The Hyper-V VSS writer requests all disk write operations to pause, so the files can be copied in a consistent state.

Hyper-V provides new functionality with its VSS writer interface. The Hyper-V VSS writer provides the following functionality:

Backup and recovery of Hyper-V and all configuration settings. Online backup of Windows Server 2003 (or later) virtual machines. Offline backup for all supported guest operating systems. Users can initiate backup from the parent partition, which will provide a seamless backup of the

Virtual Machines with Integration Services installed. Recovery of individual virtual machines to the same host or to a different host.

Typically, in order to holistically capture all information within a virtual machine, a backup solution must perform the following steps:

1. The virtual machine must be quiesced to halt writes to its memory and hard drives. Hyper-V provides an interface by which virtual machines can be placed into hibernation.

2. Capture the current memory snapshot for the virtual machine. Once the virtual machine is in hibernation, Hyper-V writes the contents of the virtual machine memory to a transient save state (.vsv) file.

3. Capture the configuration data for the virtual machine. This data is contained within a virtual machine configuration (.vmc) file.

4. Capture the physical data in a consistent manner. Each drive in the virtual machine is represented within one or more virtual hard drive (.vhd) files. Each drive may also be configured to support the Undo Drive feature, which permits rollback of the data written to the drive. If this feature is configured, the undo drive files must also be captured. Many virtual machines use layered virtual hard drives; one base image file contains the common operating system files shared between multiple virtual machines. Each virtual machine has an additional differencing disk that contains the information specific to that virtual machine. This approach can significantly reduce disk space, but the base virtual drive must be protected along with each differencing drive.

5. Once all of the files are backed up, the virtual machine must be released from its hibernated or quiesced state.

Traditionally, to ensure that the previous steps are followed, custom scripts must be written as pre-execution and post-execution tasks for a backup solution. These scripts must be adjusted every time a virtual machine is added or removed and the backup configuration must also be reconfigured to ensure that all files are preserved. Additionally, the restore procedures must be altered to include the necessary steps to reconfigure Hyper-V to run the restored virtual machines.

2.2.1 Windows Server Backup

Windows Server Backup (WSB) in Windows Server 2008 has a “generic application backup” framework that allows any application that has a VSS writer to be backed up and recovered.  The out-of-the-box experience of WSB does not claim support for backing up or recovering any application including Exchange or Hyper-V.

Any application can make use of the generic framework and “register” its VSS-Writer within WSB for backup and recovery. However, the application must be tested and certified in a particular backup/recovery scenario.

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Important

WSB allows only the “entire application” to be backed up or recovered. In Hyper-V scenarios, it means backup and recovery of all the VMs reported by the Hyper-V writer. Particular VMs can’t be chosen to back up or recover.

Active Hyper-V virtual machines can be backed up using WSB and the Hyper-V VSS writes assures the VM consistency.

When selecting volumes to backup, all the volumes where VM related files are present must be selected. For example, if the VM configuration file is stored in C:\ProgramData\ and the VHD file is stored in D:\VHD, both C:\ and D:\ must be selected for backup.

The Hyper-V writer must be registered adding the following keys:

Path Registry Key or Value

Type

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\windows nt\currentversion\WindowsServerBackup\Application Support\{66841CD4-6DED-4F4B-8F17-FD23F8DDC3DE}

Key n\a

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\windows nt\currentversion\WindowsServerBackup\Application Support\{66841CD4-6DED-4F4B-8F17-FD23F8DDC3DE}\Application Identifier

Value REG_SZ (e.g. Hyper-V)

There is more information about how WSB supports “generic applications” at the following link.

WSB supports backup of any application that has a VSS writer but the writer needs to register itself as documented here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc307260(VS.85).aspx

2.3 Backing Up VMM Servers

A VMM 2008 server contains the SQL Server database that holds the VMM configuration information. The SQL Server database can be backed up through the VMM Administrator Console, or a system state backup of the VMM server can be performed.

When a VMM server is backed up, it is recommended that a system state backup be created so that the VMM server can be rebuilt with the same security identifier (SID) in the event of catastrophic data loss.

.

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3 INFRASTRUCTURE RESTORATION

Technology is important, but it doesn't constitute a Disaster Recovery Plan or an ongoing program to manage and measure continuity. The customer must also have documented plans for all risk scenarios, a strategy for continuously updating plans as a part of change and configuration management, and a testing strategy.

One successful test is not enough to maintain the recovery capability. Other procedures are necessary:

A rigorous configuration, change management, and review process. Education, documentation, and awareness for the whole organization and its customers. Specific ongoing training for personnel involved in the process. Regular testing and analysis of contingency and disaster recovery plans. Always test the DR plan with different staff from the team used last time.

3.1 Preparing a Test Environment

To create a test environment, the first step is to check the availability of all items required to recover from a contingency situation (procedures, documentation, software, and hardware) within both the data center and the stand-by site.

These are the high-level steps to prepare the test environment:

Collect configuration and system information. Prepare images or Windows Server 2008 media. Install and configure Windows Server 2008 in hosts. Configure Hyper-V. Configure network infrastructure (DNS, DHCP, and so on). Promote member servers to domain controllers to replace a failed domain controller. Set up virtual infrastructure (VMM server and library). Test environment. Restore virtual machine files. Test virtual machines. Document recovery procedures.

3.2 Restoring Virtual Machines

In the warm or hot stand-by disaster recovery scenarios, virtual machine images are either replicated or periodically copied to the stand-by site. Virtual machines can be rapidly brought online on the physical servers at the stand-by site in the event of a primary site failure.

The virtual machines restore procedure for the cold stand-by disaster recovery scenario depends on the backup solution. A VSS solution recovery usually requires a selection of a virtual machine recovery point. Specific DPM recovery procedures are described in Appendix A.

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4 APPENDIX A – USING DPM IN A VIRTUALIZED ENVIRONMENT

Disclaimer

As of May 2008, DPM does not support Hyper-V VSS Writer. Hyper-V support will be delivered with DPM 2007 Service Pack 1, expected on Q4 Calendar Year 2008. The following information is subject to change when DPM 2007 Service Pack 1 is released.

By combining the Windows Server VSS functionality with block-level synchronization, DPM can protect virtual machines while they are active. After the initial baseline copy of the virtual machines resources is synchronized to the DPM server, any changes to the virtual machine can be continuously synchronized as often as every 30 minutes. The “express full” backup technology of DPM uses the Hyper-V VSS writer to identify which blocks have changed on the host storage volumes. Those blocks, and only those blocks, are copied to the DPM server, where they are applied to an active replica of the data, with previous iterations stored as a set of differences within the preceding backup. DPM can maintain up to 512 of these differential backups.

The entire express full backup process usually takes only a few minutes to complete, depending on how much data has changed.

After the express full backup is completed, the DPM server has captured an exact duplicate of the virtual machine from the original Hyper-V host. To provide multiple recovery points, DPM maintains a shadow copy of the changed blocks between the current express full backup and the previous one. These block level differences are stored; DPM uses them to reconstitute the previous recovery point. In this manner, DPM can maintain up to 512 recovery points.

4.1 Application Awareness

Many existing backup solutions offer generic backup functionality that can sometimes be adapted to various applications. Instead of conforming to this model, DPM 2007 was designed to leverage three fully supported Microsoft technologies to provide continuous data protection specifically for Hyper-V.

The DPM block-based synchronization engine is used to make the initial copy of a protected virtual machine, ensuring that a complete and consistent copy is made. The DPM network transport ensures that the copied data is delivered intact to the DPM server.

After the initial copy is made, DPM captures “express full” backups using the Hyper-V VSS writer. The DPM agent monitors which disk blocks have changed in the protected virtual machines. The VSS writer, under DPM instruction, provides a data-consistent set of disk-blocks to synchronize to the DPM server. This provides the benefit of a “full backup” with the DPM server having a complete and up-to-date copy of the data, without the penalty of transmitting everything across the network like a normal “full”.

The DPM agent on the Hyper-V host machine uses the existing Hyper-V APIs to determine whether a protected virtual machine is also capable of supporting VSS.

If the virtual machine is running Windows Server 2003 or later and has the Hyper-V VM Additions installed, then the Hyper-V VSS writer will pass the VSS request through to all VSS-aware processes on the virtual machine – without requiring the virtual machine to be running the DPM agent. This recursive VSS request allows the VSS writer to ensure that all disk write operations are paused both for the workloads within the virtual machine as well as for the various files that comprise the virtual machine data set and permits the VSS snapshot to be captured with no data outage.

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This unique combination of features between DPM and Hyper-V surpasses all other backup methods for virtual environments.

DPM calls the Hyper-V VSS writer. The Hyper-V VSS writer determines that the virtual machine is VSS-capable and calls the VSS

writers within the virtual machine. Any VSS-capable applications such as SQL Server 2005 invoke their VSS writers to ensure

that their application data is in a consistent state. The Windows Server VSS writer ensures that the NTFS volumes inside the virtual machine are

also consistent. When these steps are complete and the internal contents of the virtual machine are known to

be data consistent, the Hyper-V VSS writer passes the changed information to DPM for protection.

This process ensures that the virtual machine is internally consistent before securing the virtual machine files on the host, without requiring downtime. No other current data protection offering is known to offer this level of data protection for virtualized environments.

If the virtual machine does not support VSS, then the Hyper-V VSS writer will automatically use the Hyper-V APIs to put the virtual machine into hibernation before capturing the various data files. Once they have been protected, the machine is automatically restarted. This integration permits the seamless capture of any supported virtual machine configuration or operating system with as little downtime as possible – between three to five minutes in most cases.

DPM also uses VSS to maintain shadow copies on the DPM server between one express full and the previous ones. By storing only the differences between individual express full backups, DPM is able to maintain up to 512 shadow copies of the complete virtual machine data set – without requiring 512 times the space.

4.2 Deploying DPM to Protect Hyper-V

When you are ready to introduce DPM into your production environment, the first major task you need to perform is to install the DPM server. This involves installing and configuring DPM. You can find detailed guidance on this process in Chapter 1, “Installing DPM,” of the Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 Deployment Guide.

After installation, DPM will scan the Active Directory directory service to find servers that it can protect. Simply choose the servers that you want to protect from the list presented in the Protection Agent Installation Wizard. You will need to deploy the DPM protection agent on the servers to be protected. You can install the DPM protection agent through the DPM Administrator Console, System Center Configuration Manager 2007, Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003, Active Directory group policy, or from the command line on the production server to be protected.

To install the DPM protection agent on a Hyper-V host computer using the DPM Administrator Console, do the following:

1. Open DPM Administrator Console (Start, All Programs, Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager), click Management on the navigation bar, and click the Agents tab. In the Actions pane, click Install. The Protection Agent Installation Wizard appears.

2. The first time that you use the wizard, DPM assembles a list of potential servers from Active Directory. The daily auto-discovery process creates a stored list of servers that is used for subsequent installations. Select up to 50 servers and click Add. You can also specify a server by typing its name in the Server name box and clicking Add. When you are finished adding servers, click Next.

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3. Type the user name and password for the domain account to use during the agent installation. This account must be a member of the local administrators group on all selected servers. Click Next.

4. Select how you want the selected server to restart when the protection agent is installed, and click Next.

5. If any of the selected servers are members of a Microsoft Failover Cluster Server, you will see an additional screen on which you must select how to restart the clustered servers. If you have chosen to install the agent on one node of a cluster, DPM will remind you to install the agent on the other nodes of the cluster to ensure that protection does not fail during a failover. DPM will not automatically start servers in a Microsoft Failover Cluster. Click Next.

6. Review the summary and click Install Agents to proceed with the installation.7. The results of the process appear on the Task tab of the wizard. You can monitor the

installation progress in the Management task area on the Agents tab in DPM Administrator Console. If the installation is unsuccessful, you can view the alerts in the Monitoring task area on the Alerts tab.

8. After the installation is complete, click Close.

See Chapter 5, "Configuring DPM," of the Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 Deployment Guide for instructions on installing protection agents.

To efficiently make use of your storage and bandwidth, you must design a set of recovery goals that takes into account the nature of each protected data source. To define these goals, you must first determine your desired synchronization frequency, recovery point schedule, and retention range.

The synchronization frequency determines how often the DPM agent will capture snapshots of your data and transmit the changes to the DPM server. This value reflects how much data you are willing to lose from this data source if there is an outage or disaster. Think of your synchronization frequency as how often you wish incremental backups of your data to happen.

The recovery point schedule determines how often DPM creates discrete recovery points for the protected data. The DPM recovery point schedule determines the opportunities you have to recover your data. If you perform a weekly full backup and daily incremental backup in a traditional backup application, you have seven unique points of recovery. DPM creates recovery points at every express full backup as well as when data is synchronized. A fifteen minute synchronization schedule provides 96 recovery points per day.

The retention range determines how long you need DPM to keep the protected data available for recovery. You may define both short-term and long-term protection policies to control recovery from both disk and tape. Short-term policies may use either disk or tape, while long-term policies are intended to provide control over your extended tape retention.

o Defining a “short term to tape” scenario implies using DPM as a traditional tape backup solution, intending to replace one’s existing backup solution.

o Defining “short term to disk” (only) is often used to provide a robust backup and recovery solution for Hyper-V and other workloads through DPM, and then allow a third party heterogeneous “enterprise” tape solution to back up the DPM server for long term compliance.

o Most DPM users, however, will choose “short term to disk” plus “long term to tape”, enabling a complete solution that offers rapid and reliable disk-based protection and recovery, with a seamlessly integrated tape component for long-term retention of data.

DPM uses a protection group to define its protection policies. A protection group is essentially a user defined policy of “what is to be protected” and “how should the protection be done”, meaning the collection of data sources that share the same desired protection characteristics and configuration

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options such as disk allocations, replica creation method, and on-the-wire compression. Protection groups can contain data from different types of data sources. You can combine file servers, virtual machines, file shares, and Microsoft Exchange servers in the same protection group. This may be due to multiple servers in a physical office, or perhaps attached to a common project. For example, a consulting or auditing company might protect the Exchange storage group(s) containing the mailboxes for consultants working with a particular client, along with the virtual machines, shared directories, and database relating to that client’s project. The protection group provides a complete view of all of the client data in all formats, along with protection schedules and retention policies.

To plan a protection group, you must make the following decisions.

Which data sources will belong to the protection group? You do not have to include all virtual machines on a given protected Hyper-V host, and you can mix resources from different servers (including SQL Server databases, Exchange Server storage groups, file server resources, and virtual machines) in the same protection group.

Which protection method will you use for the protection group? Are you going to use tape, disk, or a combination of both? How much disk space will you need for the disk replicas? Which tape devices will you use?

How will you create the replicas for the members of the protection group?

See Chapter 5, "Configuring DPM," of the Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 Deployment Guide for more information on configuring protection groups.

4.3 Recovering Virtual Machines

To recover a protected virtual machine, you must determine which level of recovery to perform.

Recover a virtual machine to its original location – enables an IT Generalist or Disaster Recovery planner to recover the virtual machine directly where it was originally hosted.

Recover a virtual machine to an alternate location – provides the ability to restore a point-in-time version of a virtual machine to a separate location so that data may be recovered or a side-by-side comparison of the two virtual machines may be performed.

4.3.1 Recovering a Virtual Machine to its Original Location

The following steps demonstrate how to recover a protected virtual machine to its original location on a Hyper-V host computer.

1. Open DPM Administrator Console (Start, All Programs, Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager) and click Recovery on the navigation bar. Browse to the virtual machine you wish to recover in the Protected Data box.

2. Click any bold date in the calendar to see available recovery points. Select the Latest recovery point from the Time menu. Click Recover in the Actions pane to launch the Recovery Wizard.

3. Review the recovery selection and click Next. Select Recovery to original instance and click Next.

4. If you want DPM to send an e-mail message when the recovery process is finished, select the Send a notification when this recovery completes check box and enter one or more e-mail addresses. Use a semi-colon (;) to separate multiple e-mail addresses. Click Next.

5. Review your selected settings and click Recover. When the recovery is complete, click Close.

4.3.2 Recovering a VM to a Network Share

If your recovery point was created from an express full backup, you have the option to recover a protected virtual machine to a network folder on another server.

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The following steps demonstrate how to recover a protected virtual machine to a network folder:

1. Open DPM Administrator Console (Start, All Programs, Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager) and click Recovery on the navigation bar. Browse to the virtual machine you wish to recover in the Protected Data box.

2. Click any bold date in the calendar to see available recovery points. Select the desired recovery point from the Time menu. Click Recover in the Actions pane to launch the Recovery Wizard.

3. Review the recovery selection and click Next. Select Copy to a network folder and click Next.4. If your selected recovery point was not created by an express full backup, DPM will present you

with an additional dialog box listing suitable recovery points. Select one and click Next.5. Select the destination path to recover the storage group files to and click Next.6. If you want DPM to send an e-mail message when the recovery process is finished, select the

Send a notification when this recovery completes check box and enter one or more e-mail addresses. Use a semi-colon (;) to separate multiple e-mail addresses. Click Next.

7. Review your selected settings and click Recover. When the recovery is complete, click Close.

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