Full Restore Options

As of v6.1, Alike offers two choices for "full VM restore" jobs:

• Restore as Copy
• Revert Original

If you are unsure about which to choose, select Restore as Copy.

Restore as Copy

By default, Alike will choose “Restore as Copy,” which is generally the recommended setting. Using this option will cause the restore to create a new VM with the same name as the original, but with an "-Alike Restore" suffix at the end (e.g. “Server01-Alike Restore”). If a VM with this name already exists on the target host the restore job will fail with the error:

A VM with the name "VM Name -Alike Restore" already exists on host hostname.

Revert Original

If you choose the "Revert Original VM" option for your restore job, it will cause Alike to "rollback" that The Original VM to the backup version you select. Revert (aka differential, or merged) restores will contain an extra stage where Alike must calculate the differences between the current state of each disk, and the state of the backup version. The amount of time required is solely based on the size of the VDI and the speed of the underlying disks (it's essentially a linear scan). Once the differences are determined, Alike will proceed to restore only the blocks of data that are different on disk.