Problem Statement
The existing Single File Restore (SFR) mechinism contained in the Virtual Storage Console (VSC) Backup and Recovery Module (formally SMVI) was designed to facilitate Administrator initiated, end user completed restores. In Customer environments where the Administrator performs the file restores, this process is not ideal and can be labour intensive.
Solution Description
This document provides an alternate means to access and restore single files from VMs backed up with the VSC B&R module. Although this is a manual process the restores are very fast, very reliable and very repeatable. A Powershell script written by Seth Forgosh is also provided which simplies the mounting of the backed up VMDK disk which further simplifies the SFR process.
The document explains how to create a writtable copy of the backup, mount it to the VMware environment, then access the files contained within. The Powershell script mounts the file system contained in the VMDK and preps it for file level restore.
Version
1.1 Initial Release
1.2 Added in Alternate restore method and corrected formatting issues