Bugfish
Bugfish
  • 4 months ago
Github Proxmox-VMA2RAW Docker Container:
https://github.com/bugfishtm/proxmox-vma2raw

DockerDesktop download for windows:
https://www.docker.com/products/docker-desktop/

Diskinternals Linux Reader for Windows to mount raw disk images:
https://www.diskinternals.com/linux-reader/

Spotify
open.spotify.com/artist/22t8XUzb2rVqKywyCaS36k

Youtube Channel
www.youtube.com/channel/UC3cOjFu-MLj8GGDkpeIhqhQ

Website
www.bugfish.eu
Transcript
00:00In this video, I just want to show you how you can extract data out of Proxmox backup
00:18VMA files.
00:19I have a virtual machine 102 as the ID.
00:22In the mode stop, I have created this backup with compression gzip.
00:27As you can see, I have a VMA.gz file, which has been created by Proxmox and this file
00:33contains a full backup of this virtual machine.
00:36I will show you how you can access the data on this VMA file to extract data you may have
00:41lost and need to recover again on a Windows computer.
00:46As you can see, I have a storage box here, which is an external storage by my provider
00:50I use to storage my backups.
00:53And I have here an active connection to this backup server, where this backup num files
01:00are stored.
01:02So here you can see these files are related to this backup you can see in this browser
01:06field here at Proxmox.
01:09And I have downloaded the three files here.
01:13One is the log file.
01:14This file just contains information about the backup process for this backup on Proxmox.
01:20And one is the node file.
01:23This file only contains information about the VM, which has been backed up.
01:29So the file we need is a VMA.gz file.
01:33Your file maybe has a different name related to the compression you did use.
01:37And I will now unzip this VMA.gz file with WinRAR.
01:42This will take a bit.
01:45Okay, we have now unzipped our VMA file right here.
01:50And you can see I have a VMA file.
01:52I will now call this file x.vma just to get it better in shell operations and put it on
01:59my desktop.
02:00Now we need to convert this VMA image to a raw disk image to use it on different Windows
02:05software to mount it.
02:07So I have a software for it.
02:08It's a Docker container you can use.
02:10You just need Docker desktop installed on your Windows computer.
02:14And then you can download my repository.
02:17You can find the link in the description and click on the create.bat file.
02:24You can now see a Docker container has been created.
02:27And you can also find a folder files here in the repository.
02:34Put your x.vma file inside that files folder.
02:38Go to your Docker desktop instance.
02:41Click on the new deployed VMA to raw image.
02:47Navigate to exec to view the shell.
02:51Switch to bash mode.
02:53And now navigate to the folder which represents the file folder here in the repository.
02:59It's slash opt slash files.
03:02As you can see, we have the x.vma file here.
03:06Type in the comment vma extract path to the file which is here x.vma path to output folder.
03:17As you can now see, the Docker container has started to now convert the VMA file to a raw
03:24disk image.
03:29And yeah, this can take a bit depending on how large the output file will be.
03:34At the moment, you can see the VMA file is just 2.4 GB big in size.
03:42But depending on the partitions saved inside that disk image, the output file will be much
03:47larger.
03:49As you can see now, the process has been completed.
03:52And in the x folder, I now have two different files.
03:55The converted disk image which is now 108 GB in size.
04:00And a chemo server.conf file.
04:01The chemo server.conf file just contains some information about the disk type out of which
04:10the backup has been created.
04:12So this file is not really necessary for getting all data back.
04:17So this is the important file we need.
04:19I will just put it on my desktop right here.
04:22And there's different software for Windows to mount that file and to access the data
04:29on your Windows computer.
04:31I will show you Disk Internal's Linux reader here.
04:36You will get a new application inside your applications which you can execute, which
04:44is Disk Internal's Linux reader.
04:48If you start that application, you will see this window.
04:53And then you can just choose drives, mount image, raw disk image.
05:03Then choose the related file on your desktop.
05:07And as you can see, the different partitions out of the file are now displayed here.
05:14I can now access the different file systems.
05:16As you can see here, we have a Linux file system.
05:20And here I can save the data on my computer and so I can recover data out of that backup.