You may elect to perform a Bare Metal Recovery. Alternatively, you can perform a VMWare recovery, or a Hyper-V recovery, as outlined below.

Hyper-V NFS Recovery

In a Hyper-V environment, it is NOT possible to utilize the NFS Export feature of the Axcient x360Recover appliance or vault as a temporary data-store when the underlying storage of the host server has been compromised, but the physical host is still in operation, as Hyper-V cannot store virtual machine disk files on an NFS storage location. For this method to be employed, there must be sufficient local free space remaining on the appliance or vault to hold at least the Thin provisioned disk size for all protected systems you intend to recover. In addition, to complete the Export process there must be enough free space remaining on the appliance or vault to hold the fully Thick provisioned disk size of the largest machine being recovered. If insufficient disk space remains, refer to the Hyper-V iSCSI Recovery section below.

To begin recovery of the affected protected systems, from the Web Interface navigate to the Protected System details page, select a recovery point for the Protected System that you wish to restore and choose Export.  Select VHD as the format for Generation 1 Hyper-V guests, or VHDX for Generation 2 Hyper-V guests (Server 2012 or later configured for UEFI boot only).  Click Start to begin the Export process.  Monitor the progress of the operation from the Conversion tab on the Jobs menu pane. For better performance, it is recommended not to select Export to USB.  If you require additional space to perform the export, it is recommended to use the Hyper-V iSCSI Recovery method instead.

From the Web Interface navigate to the NFS Exports menu and select Enable NFS Exports. On a Vault, you will have to be logged in as a customer user account in order to see this option. If not already present, click Add Allowed IP and add the IP address of the Hyper-V host server. In multi-server environments, add all hosts addresses if desired.

Install and configure NFS Client services on the Windows Hyper-V hosts if it is not already present.  To install, run Server Manager and select Roles and Features. 

On Windows Server 2008/R2 select Features, expand File Server Tools and select Services for Network File Systems Tools. 

On Server 2012/R2 after choosing Add Roles and Features, select Role Based or Feature Based installation and then select the local server. Enable Client for NFS under the Features selections. 

For all version of Windows, mount the remote NFS share from a command prompt.

Run the following for an Appliance:

Mount –o fileaccess=777 \\<Appliance IP>\export\admin <Drive:> 
(i.e.  mount \\192.168.0.10\export\admin Z:)

Run the following for a Vault:

Mount –o fileaccess=777 \\<Appliance IP>\export\<Customer> <Drive:> 
(i.e. mount –o fileaccess=777 \\192.168.0.10\export\customer1 Z:)

Copy the exported disk volumes onto a local storage location on the Hyper-V server using Windows Explorer or your favorite file manager utility.

Create a new Hyper-V Guest as per normal.  When selecting hard disks, browse to the location that you copied the disk volume images to and selected the exported VHD/VHDX file(s).  Power on the guest server and complete any required configuration changes to the running system to return it to service. 

Hyper-V iSCSI Recovery

If disk space on the x360Recover device is constrained, iSCSI export can be used to expose the Protected System disks to Hyper-V.  This has the advantage of being faster, as we do not have to wait for the Export conversion process, but iSCSI is also more fragile. 

Exported iSCSI target identifiers are not persistent through a reboot of the Axcient x360Recover device. The disks will have to be rediscovered and guest servers will have to be reconfigured if the Axcient x360Recover device is rebooted. Ensure you have selected Live mode when starting iSCSI or data loss will occur if thex360Recover device is rebooted.

Data changes applied to the iSCSI disks is persistent and will not be lost when running iSCSI in Live mode, but the Hyper-V virtual machine configuration will have to be edited, as the iSCSI disk identification will change. It is recommended to use iSCSI Export with caution, and at present NFS Export is to be preferred.

For the Protected System you wish to recover, select a recovery point and click Start iSCSI to expose the disks to Hyper-V. 

From Administrative Tools on the Hyper-V host run iSCSI Initiator. Enter the IP address of the Appliance or Vault in the Target field and click Quick Connect. Select each discovered disk and click Connect to attach it. Click Done when finished. 

Note: When adding additional servers, you can click refresh to discover the new disk LUNs.

In order to enable a disk to be eligible for use as a pass-thru disk to a Guest system, the disk must be offline. Open Computer Manager, expand Storage, then select Disk Management. Identify the new system disks and set them offline if they are not already by right-clicking the disk name and selecting Offline.

Open Hyper-V Manager and create a new Virtual Machine. If your primary storage array has been lost you may select, “Store the virtual machine in a different location” and browse to a mapped network share provided by provided by another server. Make a new folder for Virtual Machine definitions.  

Complete the creation of the Guest and assign resources as desired. When choosing hard disk options, select “Attach a Virtual Disk Later”. Once complete, edit the settings of the new Virtual Machine.  Select the IDE (Gen 1) or SCSI (Gen 2) controller and add a hard disk. Select Physical Disk and choose the desired disk to assign from the dropdown containing all available local system disks.

Relocating from iSCSI or NFS Export Back to Local Storage

Once the host server storage has been repaired, perform the following steps to migrate the recovered systems from raw iSCSI disks back onto local storage. 

1. Shut down the Guest Virtual Machine, as this process cannot be completed while the machine is running.
2. To enable migration of iSCSI disks, you must first assign control of the disks back to the Hyper-V host. 
3. Open Computer Manager, expand Storage and select Disk Management. 
4. Right-click the disk label and select Online to enable access to the host server.
5. Open Hyper-V Manager. 
6. Right-Click Hyper-V from the left toolbar and select New Disk.
7. Select either the VHD or VHDX disk format and type Fixed or Dynamic (do not choose Differencing) and specify a location. 
8. Select Copy the contents of a physical disk and then select the appropriate source physical disk.
9. Click Finish and wait for the conversion process to complete.
10. When completed, edit the virtual machine and replace the existing physical disks with the newly created virtual disk files. 
11. To relocate virtual disk files exported from x360Recover and stored on temporary shared storage, copy them to the proper location on Local Storage using Windows Explorer or your favorite file manager utility.
12. If the Virtual Machine definition was created on a temporary network share, delete the virtual machine and recreate it on Local Storage.
13. Attach the virtual disks created or migrated in the above steps and then reboot the guest server.

IMPORTANT:  After performing a full system recovery, regardless of the method used, it is imperative that a new Full Backup be run from the Appliance to synchronize the recovered system with the backup image.  Failing to perform a full backup may result in mismatched or missing data in the recovery image and can lead to corrupted backups and total loss of protection.