DISASTER RECOVERY Mount VHDZ in Windows after crash

1

Hi,

I have a Server 2019 which suddenly crashed my RAID 0 configuration.
I do backup my system , but unfortunately , this is the same system as where urbackup runs upon.

I am using Hyper-V and my backups (exchange, domain controllers ) are all VHDZ.
I used my full image backups to restore from

I have followed all the instructions in order to start of with the sets of backups i have remaining.

Unfortunately i cannot use the VHDZ yet to convert this to vhdx or vhd.

I tried several things,
1)
Uncompressed the image with uncrompess_image.bat on a different machine and loaded the backups (parent and one incremental)

It looked good, but in the end i only saw a growth in files.

I tried to assemble_disk.
that brings me to MBR 0 types of errors
But i saw in another topic i don’t have to do this when i am using Hyper-V

In summary.
I have a new installed machine, copied all the RAW data from the old urbackup server to a new

I am not able to restore from CD i suppose.
So went to option B:

I decrompressed because vhdz by giving selecting the backups i had remaining:

And after i am stuck with a bigger file. And i don’t know how to get the vhd or vhdx from it in order to re-use it in hyper-v

I also saw multiple people saw they cannot recover from vhdz, which makes me very scared…

Uroni please help me with your great solutions. I lost my entire Active directory and Exchange at the moment and all help would be really appreciated.

I quote from your manual:
All the image files will still have the VHDZ extension, as otherwise it would have to change database entries, but the files will not be compressed anymore.

But i want to achieve the VHD extension in order to restore the virtual harddisks on hyper-v is this possible??? Or restore my old urbackupserver on a new machine and restore?
I am very desperate at the moment

1 Like
2

Perhaps look at https://urbackup.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/US/pages/2981890/How+to+restore+via+command+line ?

You can rename the file form vhdz => vhd after it has been decompressed. The problem is that the parent link isn’t renamed either, hower.

That would be an option? Put the db and files at the previous place and it works like before…

3

Hi Uroni,

You can rename the file form vhdz => vhd after it has been decompressed. The problem is that the parent link isn’t renamed either, hower.

Does not work for me, can’t mount the drive.

I also tried to restore the complete instance on a new machine:

i used the data directory in urbackup pointing to the location on the drive where i have the put the backup files from Urbackup.

But this machine does not see older backups right now.

4

OK i finally managed to get the backup server working in the new environment:

When I try to do
.\hyperv_list_backups.ps1 -VmName ****
I receive this

ConvertFrom-Json : Ongeldige JSON-primitieve: 2021-10-09.
At C:\Program files\UrBackup\hyperv_list_backups.ps1:24 char:29

  • $backups = & $exe $params | ConvertFrom-Json
  •                         ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    • CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:slight_smile: [ConvertFrom-Json], ArgumentException
    • FullyQualifiedErrorId : System.ArgumentException,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.ConvertFromJsonCommand

Also when i use

PS C:\Program files\UrBackup> .\hyperv_load_backups.ps1

cmdlet hyperv_load_backups.ps1 at command pipeline position 1
Supply values for the following parameters:
VmName: DC1
Time: 2110031932
DestPath: E:
ConvertFrom-Json : Ongeldige JSON-primitieve: 2021-10-09.
At C:\Program files\UrBackup\hyperv_load_backups.ps1:32 char:29

  • $backups = & $exe $params | ConvertFrom-Json
  •                         ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    • CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:slight_smile: [ConvertFrom-Json], ArgumentException
    • FullyQualifiedErrorId : System.ArgumentException,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.ConvertFromJsonCommand

No backups found

5

@uroni
Current status:
I ran the uncompress_image.bat to create a bigger VHD file and used that vhdz file to rename it to vhd.
Later because i use ONLY gen2 vms,
I’ve managed to mount a VHD and ran convert-vhd to vhdx in powershell manually. Your powershell outputs a vhdx . So i miss some commands that is able to use it as a gen2 VM for sure. Normally your powershell let me add the vhdx and a gen 2 boots. But with all the manual steps, i am not able to get out of the bootloop.

When i start my GEN 2 Hyper-V machine and it starts boot looping with the missing MBR boot record while i use GPT. (recovery loading files) and then all the PE options in blue.

Recovering or restoring the bootrecord is not an option with the Windows Recovery CD of Windows Server / 10.

Also that did not fix or let me recreate a new boot record bcd.

So please Uroni, what is the magic trick in your powershell script that is using (now wrong timestamps or can’t get them from the recovered urbackup server)

Or when i restore i get the message that when i try to restore the vhdx file is not created.

So i need a way around to run your powershell script and fix the mbr also .

Normally with a healthy urbackup server, i could restore all my vm’s with that way.

Now only because i restored all my old data on a new urbackupserver powershell scripts does not let me load timestamps or a backup server is not found error.

Hopefully you can find some time to help me this weekend, i otherwise need to rebuild AD and Exchange completely and your reply will be my last resort