Restore large backup on SQL Server's VM currently replicating to a remote VM both Hyper-V

Question

I am looking for ideas to restore a large backup on a VM hosting SQL Server that is replicating to another VM in a remote location (Hyper-V VM Replicaton). Restoring it will replicate the restored backup consuming a lot of the bandwidth between both sites.

Both sites are in same city. Would it work if I pause the VM replication, restore the DB on both local and remote VMs, then resume replication? This will save from wasting bandwidth.

I know I can break the replication, restore the DB, export the local VM and import into the remote site. It would work, but there are other DBs on the VM server. The exported VM image would be huge. The other issue with this. I will need to repeat this process when moving other databases into the local VM which does not sound like a good idea.

Is there a better way?

Thanks,

Answer 1

If you start the VM on the passive site, that will cause the VM to be out of sync with the active system and it will have to resync. So whatever you do while the passive system is online, it will be wiped out when the VMs are synced up again. The simple act of booting the passive system causes writes to the event logs, registry, and numerous other things that result in it being out of sync with the active system, so the question of what you do thereafter, whether it be restoring a database, modifying files, etc., is irrelevant as the VM will have to be resynchronized with the primary.

The only way your proposed operation might possibly help is if you can get the database files restored at the exact same addresses on the disk, and then the block comparison of the sync process would see those parts of the disk as identical. However, this is not something that is reasonable to attempt.