Microsoft Azure Recovery Services vault provides many different options for recovering VMs.

A few of these options are described in this section. Refer to Microsoft Azure documentation for more details.

  • Restore OS Disk for CSM
  • Restore to a new CSM VM retaining the private IP address when a new NIC must be provisioned

Restore OS Disk for CSM

You can use the Restore Disk option to recover CSM if you want to preserve other configurations such as the NIC.
  1. In your Microsoft Azure subscription, navigate to the backup screen listing all available backups of the CSM VM, for example, <deployment_prefix>-nsx-mgmt-rg > <deployment_prefix>-nsx-csm > From Operations in the left panel > Backup.
  2. Click Restore VM and select a Restore Point.
  3. From Restore Virtual Machine select Create new under Restore Configuration and select Restore disks for Restore type.

    The NSX Cloud management VNet information is auto-populated.

  4. Click Restore.
  5. The restored OS disk is saved in the same resource group as the CSM VM. It is named as: <deployment_prefix>-nsx-csm-<original OS disk name>-<backup timestamp>, for example: mynsxcsm-osdisk-20201022-191737.
  6. Swap the old CSM disk with the newly restored disk by navigating to <deployment_prefix>-nsx-csm > Disks > Swap OS disk.

Restore to a new CSM VM retaining the private IP address when a new NIC must be provisioned

If CSM NIC is not usable and must be re-provisioned, you must delete it, along with other CSM resources and restore CSM to a new VM by marking the private IP address as static in the deployment template. Follow these steps:

  1. In your Microsoft Azure subscription, navigate to the backup screen listing all available backups of the CSM VM, for example, <deployment_prefix>-nsx-mgmt-rg > <deployment_prefix>-nsx-csm > From Operations in the left panel > Backup.
  2. Click Restore VM and select a Restore Point.
  3. From Restore Virtual Machine select Create new under Restore Configuration and select Restore disks for Restore type.

    The NSX Cloud management VNet information is auto-populated.

  4. Click Restore.
  5. The restored OS disk is saved in the same resource group as the CSM VM. It is named as: <deployment_prefix>-nsx-csm-<original OS disk name>-<backup timestamp>, for example: mynsxcsm-osdisk-20201022-191737.
  6. Delete the existing CSM VM and CSM NIC from the resource group.
    1. CSM VM
    2. CSM NIC and public IP
    3. CSM OS disk
    4. CSM data disk
  7. Go to the OS disk restore created from the vault.

    <deployment_prefix>-nsx-vault > Backup Items (under Protected Items in the left panel menu) > Azure Virtual Machine > <deployment_prefix>-nsx-csm > View all Jobs.

  8. Click the CSM VM with the Restore operation. This is the OS disk recently restored. Click Deploy Template.

  9. Update details as necessary for the new CSM VM.
  10. Click Edit Template, change the private IP allocation method to static and provide the existing private IP address for the CSM appliance. For example,
       "resources": [
        <...>,
        {
          <...>,
                "ipConfigurations": [
                    {
                        "properties": {
                            "privateIPAllocationMethod": "Static",
                            "privateIPAddress": "192.168.14.12"
                            <...>},
         <...>
  11. Save the template, accept the terms and conditions, and click Purchase.

    The new CSM VM is deployed, retaining the same IP addresses as the old CSM VM.