Agentless restores can be used to restore small files and folders into a virtual machine without installing an agent on the destination client. Using this option simplifies deployment and reduces the impact of backup and restore operations for virtual machines that do not have high transaction rates and large data requirements. This option is preferred in cases where the CommServe system or Backup Gateway is not able to communicate with the VM (for example, in a restricted network).
You can use agentless file recovery when the total restore size is less than 10 GB and you are restoring fewer than 10,000 files. If you need to restore more than 10GB or 10,000 files, install a File System (FS) agent on the VM. To automatically install the FS agent, select the Restore via CV tools option in the Restore options dialog box. For more information, see Restoring Guest Files and Folders for VMware.
To improve the performance of restore operations, the Commvault Cloud uses SMB protocol instead of VMware tools as the default restore method for Windows access nodes and Windows destination VMs.
Requirements for Agentless Restores
To verify the version of VMware software that is required to support this feature, see Requirements.
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For Windows, the virtual machine must have the NTFS file system.
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The destination machine must meet the following requirements:
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The virtual machine must be powered on.
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The most recent release of VMware Tools must be installed and running.
You can use open-vm-tools on guest VMs that run supported Linux releases. Open-vm-tools must be installed and running.
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The user account that is used to browse the destination VM must be a local user with write permissions for the VM.
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To authenticate users for Linux VMs with PAM modules, see VMware agentless restores fail for Linux VMs with pluggable authentication modules.
Considerations for Agentless Restores
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An access node cannot make two or more simultaneous parallel connections to the same VM. The restore to the VM for the job that establishes the first connection succeeds, and subsequent jobs fail with a connection error because there is already an active connection between the access node and the VM.
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For Windows VMs:
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You cannot restore ACLs. If you choose Restore Both Data and ACLs, only VM data is restored, and the ACLs from the source VM are not restored. The Restore ACLs Only option is not supported.
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You cannot use an agentless restore operation to recover reparse points (such as such as shared folders, mount points, or junction points) on Windows NTFS volumes.
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For Linux VMs:
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If you choose Restore Both Data and ACLs, only basic user, group, and world permissions are restored. Additional file attributes such as ACLs and extended attributes are not restored. Timestamps are only restored when using agentless restores together with a Linux access node (Backup Gateway). The Restore ACLs Only option is not supported.
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Permissions for guest files and folders are retained only when the user running the restore operation has permissions to change group ownership on the restored files and folders. If the user does not have change group ownership permissions, the restored files and folders are owned by the user who performed the restore.
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Hard link files can be restored. If source files are also restored, any corresponding link files use the same index node (inode).
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