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How to restore 2008 R2

I loved the product so far.  Except we just attempted to do a restore.


Altaro allows you to install on Server 2008 R2 and says it's supported for backups.  That's our physical server OS, so, perfect.  It's been backing up great for about a week.


However, we just found out restoring Server 2008 R2  isn't supported when attempting to do a restore to VHD in our test environment.  


Is there another way to restore server 2008 R2?  If not, why is server 2008 r2 listed as supported for backups?   What's the use case?  



Best Answer

Hi Joel, we do indeed support backing up 2008 R2 servers but these must be restored to 2012 or newer OS's.

Rather than disabling backups of 2008 R2 altogether because of a limitation on the restore, we decided to offer that option anyway as you can still restore that 2008 R2 server to a 2012+ Server host.


We do not have any current plans to change this behaviour, but we will monitor feedback as usual of course :)


Answer

Hi Joel, we do indeed support backing up 2008 R2 servers but these must be restored to 2012 or newer OS's.

Rather than disabling backups of 2008 R2 altogether because of a limitation on the restore, we decided to offer that option anyway as you can still restore that 2008 R2 server to a 2012+ Server host.


We do not have any current plans to change this behaviour, but we will monitor feedback as usual of course :)

Thanks for the clafification!  Can I install the physical backup software on a VM? I thought it was only for physicals.  Our problem is we converted everything to 2019 vms, and just have a few 20008R2 physicals laying around.  


We could always spin up a newer eval copy OS I suppose on an old box.


I appreciate the clarification.

Hi.

Now for me to understand. (I have a physical Server 2008 R2) Is it possible to backup the physical 2008 R2 Server and

restore it to a Host running Server 2012R2 HyperV  as VM 2008R2 Server?


My Server Hardware of 2008 R2 Server is bad and i have some Hosts with 2012R2 running. It will be great, if i can restore the 2008 R2 to

a good working 2012R2 HyperV Host as VM. I save a lot of Time.

100% correct, you can backup the 2008R2 physical server, and restore it, as a VM, to your 2012R2 hyper-v host :)

Can I install the physical backup software on a VM?  


No, as the name suggests this tool is for Physical servers only.

Altaro VM Backup - will backup all your VMs from Hyper-V Server 2008R2 and upwards

Altaro Physical Server Backup - will backup your physical machines, and currently will allow you to restore them as a VM to a Hyper-V Server 2012 and upwards

Matt,


I am attempting to restore a physical 2008R2 machine to a 2016 Hyper V host as a VM. When I do, I get this error..."Restoring from a Windows Server 2008 R2 machine is not supported." From what I read above this should be supported? Any help is appreciated.


Thanks,

Phil

I am also having trouble restoring a physical 2008r2 server, but to a 2012 Hyper V host as a VM.  I get the same error when choosing either option of restoring to Hyper V host, or virtual disk.  According to Matt this should be allowed correct?

Brian - 


For us the issue was that we were attempting to do the restore from the 2008 R2 machine itself. We installed the altaro physical backup program on another machine (VM running Server 2016) connected it to the backup location, and the restore ran fine. Hope that helps.


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