Symptoms
- You deploy a virtual appliance to ESXi host
- You create an Entire VM backup plan to tape (either connected directly or via Storage Node) and activate Enable file recovery from disk backups stored on tapes backup option
- Backup is created successfully
- When you attempt to recover files from this backup, no files/folders are shown. Only Partition 0 empty folder is shown in the backup:
Cause
Specifics of product design.
Unlike other storage media, tape does not have fast random access for mounting backup archive for file recovery. When backing up VM to tape using agentless backup, disk contents are not analyzed and metadata for the disk is not saved to tape so mounting a disk image for file recovery is not possible.
In future versions of the product, the option Enable file recovery from disk backups stored on tapes will not be available for agentless Entire VM backup on tape.
Solution
As a workaround, Export the backup from tape to local storage and recover files from the exported backup archive.
To export the backup, go to Backups -> Locations -> select the location with tape -> select the necessary backup -> click Show backups in the menu on the right -> select the necessary recovery point (if applicable) -> click on the "gear" icon and select Export
More information
If you plan to frequently recover files from Entire VM backups on tape, it is recommended to configure backup to local storage first, and then replicate these backups to tape. This way you will always have a local backup copy for recovering files.