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WDShellyFlag for United States of America

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veeam restore

Hi folks. I am using the free version of Veeam and have made a VeeamZip backup of a small virtual machine and I wish to restore it to the same ESXi host but put it in a different folder on the same datastore and give it a different name. When I've restored it I wish to boot it up just to be sure that Veeam is backing up and restoring OK. BTW, this virtual machine is an old one that is powered off and is not in production. When I restore it I'll turn the NIC off for that VM since I don't want it to connect to the network.

My question is that I'm not sure what Veeam means by "Target VM folder" in the restore wizard. It won't let me change that value and it sets it at "vm" (see the wizard summary below). I've told it to use the same resource pool and datastore and told it to give the restored virtual machine a new name, but I want to understand what the "Target VM folder" exactly means before I restore this VM since there are other production VMs running on this host. I browsed the datastore in vSphere and I don't see a folder named "vm" so I'm confused. Thanks in advance for your help.

THIS IS THE SUMMARY THE RESTORE WIZARD SHOWS RIGHT BEFORE YOU DO THE RESTORE
Proxy: Automatic selection
Original VM name: Virtual Machine 1
New VM name: Virtual Machine 1 test restore
Restore point: less than a day ago (10:28 AM Tuesday 5/9/2017)
Target host: 210.110.22.209
Target resource pool: Resources
Target VM folder: vm
Target datastore: datastore1
Network mapping:
        VM Network -> VM Network
Avatar of Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
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Target VM folder, is the name of the folder on the datastore, where you want it to be restored, or the name as it appears on the datastore.

Usually the target VM folder is the same as the name in the Inventory.
Avatar of WDShelly

ASKER

Thanks, Andrew, but there is no folder on the datastore named "vm", and Veeam does not let me change it, so I think there is something else going on here. If what you say were the case (and let's assume that Veeam will create a folder named "vm" when I do the restore, then Veeam would be forcing me to restore all virtual machines into the same folder, which obviously wouldn't work.
What if you complete the restore?

Does it create the folder vm ?
Hi Andrew. I was asking this question because I don't want to complete the restore until I'm very confident that the restore won't overwrite or interfere or comingle the restored files with any existing VMs.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
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Thanks again Andrew. Your screenshots were really helpful. I am not using a vCenter server, so I cannot select a folder. I agree with you that the naming is poor - when it says "target vm folder" it certainly makes it sound like it is a folder on the target datastore, so something like "vcenter inventory folder" would have made more sense. So I guess since I'm not using vCenter that I'll have no problems because I've renamed the target virtual machine name by appending "test restore" to it. I also assume that Veeam will create a new folder with the same name as the restored virtual machine name so that the restored files will be in their own folder. Sound right?
I also assume that Veeam will create a new folder with the same name as the restored virtual machine name so that the restored files will be in their own folder. Sound right?

Correct.
Thanks Andrew, I'll mark you as having solved this for me.
Thanks again, Andrew. I'm closing this issue.