Recover VM Guest Files

You can recover virtual machine guest files from VMware Live Cyber Recovery snapshots, which you can then manually restore to any destination of your choice.

You can recover guest files from two different locations:

• The Virtual machines list.
• A snapshot inside a protection group.
• The Other menu during ransomware recovery, when VMs are in the validation state.

Note: For supported file systems on Windows and Linux, and for a full list of caveats and limitations with guest file recovery, see Guest File Recovery.

If you are recovering files from large VMs, you can select a snapshot to use for the VM, close the dialog box, and return later when the snapshot is loaded.

Every guest file download is also available as a link from the Monitor > Tasks list that you can send to other users. The download link expires after six hours. The user on the local system must have file-level permissions to unzip the package.

Note: If you are using access lists for VMware Live Cyber Recovery, only IP addresses listed in the Management access list can download a guest file for recovery.

Note: During guest file recovery on Windows VMs, you might see drives or partitions that are un-selectable and listed as unsupported. These drives and partitions are reserved by Microsoft OS and are not accessible buy VMware Live Cyber Recovery.

Procedure

1. From the left navigation, select Virtual Machines.
2. Decide which VM to recover files from, and then click Recover guest files next to the VM.
   If you are accessing a VM from a protection group snapshot, select the protection group, then select a snapshot, then select a VM and click Recover guest files.
   If you are accessing guest file recovery during ransomware recovery, then after you start a VM in validation, select Recover guest files from the Other menu.
   Note: If you have more than one cloud file system, select one from the upper left of the list. If you have deployed only one cloud file system, it is already selected.
3. In the Select snapshot dialog box, select a snapshot of the VM to use for guest file recovery.
4. In the Recover guest files dialog box, the VM begins loading. To select a different snapshot, click the left or right arrow, or click Use different snapshot.
   VMs with larger disks will take longer to analyze. You can close the dialog and return later. Virtual disk analysis will continue in the background.
5. Once the VM has loaded, in the Recover guest files dialog box you can select files from the list of Available files and folders. Click the down arrow to download individual files or folders. When you click the down arrow after selecting a file or folder, the ZIP package downloads immediately.
   
6. To download multiple files, click the right arrow to select multiple files. After you have selected files for download, click Create ZIP file to start the download.
   
7. After the ZIP file downloads, click Close. Your user must have file-level permissions to unzip the package.
8. To access a URL for the guest file package, select Monitor > Tasks.
9. Find the guest file download task in the list. To filter the list, select the Protection filter.
10. From the menu at the far right of the task entry, right-click the download icon and select Copy Link Address.
11. You can access the same link from the Monitor > Tasks list. The download link expires after six hours. The user on the local system must have file-level permissions to unzip the package.