Conversion to a virtual machine

You can create a virtual machine from a disk-level backup that includes an operating system. Thus, you can quickly start a pre-created standby machine or perform cross-platform recovery. For example, you can recover a backup of a physical or virtual machine to a different hypervisor.

A protection agent that has access to the backup archive performs the conversion. For more information about the available options, see Types of conversion to virtual machine.

Conversion plan

You can schedule conversions and incrementally apply backed-up changes to the resulting virtual machine.

Alternative options

The following options do not support scheduling or incremental updates.

  • Recovering a physical machine as a virtual machine – a one-time conversion in which you select disks and adjust the settings for each virtual disk.

    Use this method when you want to perform the conversion once or occasionally, for example, for cross-platform recovery.

  • Running a virtual machine from a backup (Instant Restore) – starts a temporary virtual machine directly from a backup without a full conversion.

    Unlike a converted machine, the resulting virtual machine uses resources only while it is running, and datastore space is required only for storing changes to the virtual disks. The host does not access the virtual disks directly – instead, it communicates with the agent, which reads data from the backup. As a result, performance is lower than that of a converted machine. For more information, see Running a virtual machine from a backup (Instant Restore).

Limitations

  • Conversion to a virtual machine is available only for disk-level backups. If a backup includes the system volume, and contains all of the information necessary for the operating system to start, the resulting virtual machine can start on its own. Otherwise, you can add its virtual disks to another virtual machine.
  • Backups that are stored on NFS cannot be converted.
  • Backups that are stored in Secure Zone can be converted only by the agent that is running on the same machine.
  • If the backup contains Linux logical volumes (LVM), you must create it by using Agent for VMware, Agent for Hyper-V, Agent for Scale Computing HC3, or Agent for Proxmox. Converted machines must match the platform of the original machine (VMware ESXi, Hyper-V, Scale Computing HC3, or Proxmox VE). Cross-hypervisor conversion is not supported.
  • When backups of a Windows machine are converted to VMware Workstation or VHDX files, the resulting virtual machine inherits the CPU type from the machine that performs the conversion. As a result, the corresponding CPU drivers are installed in the guest operating system. If it is started on a host with a different CPU type, the guest system displays a driver error. Update this driver manually.

  • With Proxmox, conversion to a virtual machine is also supported on storages that do not provide snapshot capabilities. In such cases, incremental updates of the resulting virtual machine are not possible. For more details about the storage types that are supported by Proxmox, see https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/chapter-pvesm.html.