VirtualBoot

SPX VirtualBoot lets you easily create server and workstation virtual machines from ShadowProtect backup files.

VirtualBoot works on three hypervisors:

• VMware vSphere (ESXi clusters)
• Oracle VirtualBox
• Microsoft Hyper-V on Windows (Server 2012 R2, Server 2016, Server 2019, and Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise)

You can VirtualBoot a system-volume backup-image created with ShadowProtect SPX in a vCenter Virtual Machine (VM) environment or on a physical machine. On VirtualBox or Hyper-V you need to VirtualBoot on a physical machine.

Notes:

• To VirtualBoot a Linux OS backup requires a Linux host running either VirtualBox or ESXi as the Hypervisor. However, you cannot VirtualBoot a Linux OS backup on Hyper-V; or VirtualBox on a Windows host.
• You should only VirtualBoot an image on a host that has the same version (or newer) of operating system as the source operating system for the image. If an image from a newer operating system is VirtualBooted on a host with an older operating system, the boot may fail because the host may not have support for newer file system types in the backup image.

Important! On systems running a version of SPX prior to SPX 7, System volumes larger than 2 TB, will not VirtualBoot. This applies to vSphere, Hyper-V, and VirtualBox. The VirtualBoot process creates a generation 1 virtual machine and converts the OS volume to an MBR disk. MBR disks are limited to 2 TB. See the KB article Understanding Arcserve VirtualBoot Technology and the Release Notes for additional information about all volumes.