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VM Recovery Tips: "Overwrite the Existing One" vs "Create a New One" — Which Do You Actually Want?
  

George Fady Lv2  Posted 2026-Aug-11 21:22


As a technical support engineer, I get asked this question frequently enough to document it: If you need to restore a VM from last night’s backup and do not want to keep a second leftover VM afterwards, which recovery option should you choose: Overwrite the existing VM, or Create a new VM?

Answer: Overwrite the existing VM. Many users are alarmed by the word “delete” shown in the wizard step. However, this only means discarding the VM’s current (fault‑affected) disk state for today — it does not delete the VM itself. Once the recovery completes, the VM retains its original name, VMID, MAC address, UUID and network configuration. No reconnection or re‑assignment work will be required afterwards.

"Create a new one" is a different tool — it spins up a second, independent VM with a new identity, and you'll be doing manual network reconfiguration. Only use that if you actually need both VMs to exist side by side.
  
Steps:
  • Compute page → select the VM → More → Backups (or Reliability → Scheduled Backup / CDP).
  • Click Recover on the previous night's backup.
  • Choose "Overwrite the existing one."
  • Confirm — VM shuts down, data is replaced, comes back up as the same VM.
  • Log in and verify the issue is gone and config is intact.



Things to plan for: there's downtime while it recovers (depends on backup size), today's changes/newly installed apps get wiped since it's a full revert, and any snapshots on the VM get deleted as part of the operation — confirm in advance if you need to preserve any.

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admin  Posted 2026-Sep-03 15:59
  
Thanks for taking the initiative to share the practical tips with the community members.
Arsalan Israr Lv1  Posted 2026-Aug-13 15:15
  
Thanks for sharing
ND Lv4  Posted 2026-Aug-12 14:00
  
Worth a one-liner on how to verify the backup is actually "last night's" - for example, checking the timestamp in the list before hitting Recover — since picking the wrong restore point is probably the second most common mistake after the Overwrite/Create confusion.
Humayun Ahmed Lv4  Posted 2026-Aug-12 12:59
  
Thanks to share!
AR Lv3  Posted 2026-Aug-11 22:55
  
I appreciate you sharing.