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how to restore WIndows without losing activation state and network configurations

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Hi, Whenever I restore entire VM (on Vmware vsphere 6.x with vcenter 6.5) to new VM, the restored VM lost the Windows activation status and network configurations. Is this normal? Is there anyway to work around? 

Thanks,

Aldous

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Hello Aldous,

It is expected that Windows activation may be required after you have restored your system. 
This Windows system detects that the hardware layer was changed and asks to reactivate the license.
Acronis Backup does not interfere with Windows licensing in order to align with Microsoft licensing policies.: https://kb.acronis.com/content/36187

As for network configuration the restored VM gets new network interface. When you backup VM via Agent for VMWare, it considers MAC address you can see in vShere (under "Settings" of source VM).  If source VM does not have static MAC address, it is exprected that VM will get new network configuration , because this information is obtained from DHCP Server in your environment. 
There have already been suggestions about the possibility of preserving network configuration after recovery to new VM (in case MAC address is dynamic or if you make changes  inside the guest OS) and our development team is reviewing possible ways to implement an option "Preserve original IP and MAC settings"

Hi Dariya,

thanks for your respond. I think that I wasn't clear about my question in regarding the MS activation. First of all, I'm not trying to violate or bypassing licensing. Consider a situation below: 

when we have application issue with a VM running on activated Windows server. We may want to try to restore entire VM from backup to see it resolve the issue. At this point, we don't want to destroy/delete current VM because we are uncertain that we want to revert to backup. Once we confirmed the restored VM is what we want, we would commit the restored VM and delete the existing one. If the restore can maintain the hardware status as original, it will be much easier. In fact, this is not only affect Windows license. some application license will be an issue too. 

I understand that it is not possible with current but it will be nice if there is option in future release. 

regards,

Aldous