We create regular nightly backups of our physical server to (rotating) external hard drives. Our physical server is a Windows Server 2016 running two Server 2016 VM instances: the domain controller and the production server.
I am performing a disaster recovery test for the scenario where the server breaks, replacement hardware is not (immediately) available and the VMs need to be restored to a client machine to resume operation until replacement hardware is available.
Is it possible to restore files from a backup created with Windows Server Backup (Server 2016) on a Windows client machine (e.g. Windows 10)?
(What I tried so far: I attached the external HDD to a Windows 10 PC, stared "Backup and Restore (Windows 7)" and selected "Select another backup to restore files from", but no backup device was found.)
Best Answer
Great you are actually testing your disaster recovery! So many admins blindly rely on their backups.
Unlike Remote Server and Role Administration Tools that are available on Windows 10 (i.e. can be turned on from Windows Features), Windows Server Backup is only available on Windows Server operating systems in the Add Roles and Features Wizard in Server Manager.
However, in your scenario you are not restoring to the host operating system but to a VM. Some of the recovery options works within the newly installed server: Recover Files and Folders or Volumes.
Then, some of the options needs VSS writer running all the time, making them only available for restoring a previous state, like Recover Applications and Data; they are out of option here. Finally, Recover the Operating System or Full Server must be launched from the Windows Recovery Environment. I haven't personally tested, but this is something you could try: test if it is possible to use the Windows Recovery Environment within "Install an OS from a boot CD/DVD".
Then, outside the Windows Server Backup (& restoring to a client machine) used here, there's another option: you can use Azure Site Recovery and Replicate Hyper-V virtual machines to Azure. This way, you can skip the possibly long restoring phase and have up-to-date off-site backup of the whole servers in a cloud. Like in your situation here, it's also possible to run the fully functional server on Azure until you have the replacement hardware. You just need a temporary site-to-site VPN and possibly modify your network configuration. Naturally, it's wise to test this in advance, too.