Virtual Machine Fails to Start After Successful Restore

Restores from incremental backup jobs require that a complete backup cycle be available, including a previous full backup.

Symptoms

If a new storage policy or server plan is assigned to a subclient or VM group, a restore from an incremental backup job that was performed using the original storage policy or plan completes successfully, but the restored VM fails to start.

Causes

This issue occurs when a full backup is performed using the new storage policy or plan, and full backups that were performed using the original storage policy or plan are pruned based on data aging parameters. It is still possible to perform a restore from an older incremental backup job, but the VM data is incomplete and the restored VM fails to start.

Resolution

After changing the storage policy or plan for a subclient or VM group, perform restores from a full backup job, or from an incremental job that is part of a complete backup cycle that includes a previous full backup.