Guide

Full VM Restore

Recreate a protected virtual machine from an EBA recovery point, to its original location or an alternate platform.

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Overview

Full VM restore recreates a protected virtual machine from an EBA recovery point. It recovers the whole workload: the disks and the VM configuration Sendense captured during protection.

Restore is not failover

A full VM restore creates a VM from a recovery point. DR failover promotes a maintained replication target instead. Restore is not rollback or failback, and it never bypasses legal hold, immutability, retention, or recovery point health checks.

When to Use It

The original VM is lost, corrupted, or no longer trusted.
You need a complete point-in-time copy of the VM.
A recovery point must be restored to an alternate target.
Cross-platform recovery is needed where supported.
File-level or item-level recovery is not enough.

Smallest recovery first

If you only need a few files or application objects, file-level or item-level recovery can be faster and safer than restoring the whole VM.

Source and Target Selection

A restore starts from a selected VM, a selected recovery point, one or more protected disks from that point, and the EBA repository location that can serve it. Recovery point health matters: a point may be healthy, incomplete, or need verification, and restore can be blocked until Sendense confirms it is restore-ready.

The destination is either the original location — the platform and site where the workload was protected — or an alternate location on another supported platform, site, cluster, zone, datastore, or network.

Depending on the target, the GUI asks for target credentials, storage placement, network mapping, compute or service offering placement, and the restored VM name.

Restore Shapes

Same-platform restore

Restore back to the same platform type, such as VMware to VMware or CloudStack to CloudStack.

Cross-platform restore

Sendense adapts the protected workload for a different supported target platform. Depending on the guest OS and destination, this can involve conversion, driver preparation, boot adaptation, network mapping, target template selection, and compatibility checks.

Batch restore

Multiple restore items dispatched under one guided workflow.

Restore Options

Power on after restore

Starts the VM once the restore completes.

Preserve MAC address

Keeps the original network adapter identity where supported.

Overwrite existing VM

Replaces an existing VM in an original-location overwrite workflow.

Network mappings

Maps source networks to destination networks.

Restored VM name

Names the new or recovered VM.

Watch for collisions

Preserving MAC addresses, restoring static IPs, powering on a restored copy, or overwriting an existing VM can affect production if the source VM is still running.

How a Restore Runs

You choose full VM restore, then select the VM and recovery point.
You choose disks or accept the full disk set, and pick the original or an alternate target.
SHA plans the restore and validates target credentials, destination inventory, sizing, recovery point health, and operation conflicts.
SHA uses captured metadata to plan VM shape, disks, firmware, compute, and network placement where supported.
EBA supplies the protected disk data. SNA or target-side platform services participate where the destination needs site-local access.
Sendense creates or prepares the target VM, restores the selected disk data, applies supported VM metadata, and powers on if selected.
Progress, warnings, validation results, and cleanup state are recorded on the restore job.

Results and Cleanup

A restore job reports its status, current phase, per-disk progress where visible, the restored VM identity, metadata application status, and any validation warnings or differences.

Validation results are recovery evidence, not a guarantee that every application service inside the restored VM is running. A validation warning does not by itself mean the restore failed.

Failed or cancelled restores can leave resources behind. Sendense tracks restore jobs and cleans up failed or unwanted restore artifacts where supported; some failures may still need operator review.