Application Restore

When you click on an application-based backup, you enter a restore screen for that application, e.g., for Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL Server, or VMware.

Exchange Restore

The Exchange Restore screen allows you to restore a Microsoft Exchange server backup. You have the choice to restore the entire Exchange backup or individual items from the Exchange database. At the top of the screen you will see the name of database or storage group, as well as the backup (or backups) that will be restored.

Restore Options

The "Restore" button will take you to the Exchange restore options screen that will allow you to choose from the available types of restore:

At the bottom of the screen is an Options box that includes any advanced options associated with the restore operation. The user may either select the "Cancel" button in order to cancel the operation or the "Restore" button in order to initiate the restore.

Exchange Item-Level Restore

For details about Exchange Item-Level Restore, see Restoring Exchange items.

It is possible to restore selected items from an Exchange backup by selecting the desired Exchange server from the lower right hand status screen, then in the information screen, selecting Restore Items to enter the file-level restore interface. This allows you to restore individual items, rather than a restore of the entire Exchange database.

Important:

When entering the Item-Level restore interface, the RRC first checks to see if an Exchange image is already constructed, as only one is allowed to exist on the appliance at a time. If one does not exist, the user presses Create to create the image. If an image is already constructed, or after successful construction of a disk image, a set of instructions will appear that tell the user to map a network drive on the appliance's exchange_restore network share directly to the client to which they wish to restore files. Once completed, the user should then disconnect this drive, go back to the RRC, and select Tear Down to remove the image.

SQL Restore

The SQL Restore screen allows you to restore a Microsoft SQL Server backup. At the top of the screen you will see the name of the database and instance, as well as the backup (or list of backups) that will be restored.

The available types of restore are:

At the bottom of the screen is an Options box that includes any advanced options associated with the restore operation. The user may either select the "Cancel" button in order to cancel the operation or the "Restore" button in order to initiate the restore.

VMWare Restore

When you click on a VMware backup for restore, you have a choice to restore the entire VM image or individual files from the backup. Clicking Restore goes to an interface to restore the entire VMware virtual machine, while selecting Restore Files goes to a file recovery interface. VMware Instant Recovery can be performed by clicking Restore.

Restore Option

The VMware Restore screen allows you to restore a VMware backup. At the top of the screen you will see the name of the virtual machine and its host ESX server, as well as the backup (or list of backups) that will be restored.

The user can select either a Full, a Differential, or an Incremental backup to be restored. For all VMware restores, there will be one additional restore job queued during the process. The most recent backup will be used for this restore, to extract the metadata that defines the targeted backup's virtual machine configuration options. This will then be followed by the restore of one or more backups depending upon whether a Full, Differential, or Incremental backup was selected. If a Full backup is selected, only that backup will be restored, while selecting a Differential backup will trigger a restore of the Full backup on which the Differential backup is based, followed by the restore of the Differential backup. If restoring an Incremental backup, the Full will first be restored, followed by the list of Incremental backups that follow the Full backup.

In each of the VMware restore scenarios, the user will first be asked to select the target ESX server for the restored virtual machine. The determination of the available ESX servers may take some time, so wait for the process to be finished before continuing. Once the user chooses the ESX server, he can then select the datastore on which the virtual machine's data should be stored, then pick the name of the virtual machine. By default, the virtual machine name will be that of the original with _restore appended to it. You may make the virtual machine have the same name as the original; the Virtualization Protector will create a new VM for the restore even if it has the same name as the original and will not overwrite the original VM.

VMware Instant Recovery can be performed by selecting the 'Instant Recovery' checkbox. This feature allows the recovery of VMware systems in just a few minutes. Upon checking the 'Instant Recovery' checkbox a list of ESX servers will be displayed. Selecting an ESX server and a datastore on that ESX server will determine where the virtual machine is restored. Audit mode provides a method to test the functionality of VMware Instant Recovery. Instant Recovery job progress can be monitored by navigating to Tools then Instant Recovery Job Status.

Instant Recovery is not available to versions of ESX/ESXi earlier than 4.0. Instant Recovery is not supported for 32-bit systems. Additionally, a vCenter server with an Enterprise or Enterprise Plus license is needed.

VMware File-Level Restore

It is possible to restore selected files from a VMware backup by selecting the desired one from the lower right-hand-side status screen, then in the information screen, selecting Restore Files to enter the file-level restore interface.

When entering the File-Level restore interface, the RRC first checks to see if a VMware image is already constructed, as only one image is allowed to exist on the appliance at a time. If one does not exist, the user presses Create to create the image. If an image is already constructed, or after successful construction of a disk image, a set of instructions will appear that tell the user to connect using iSCSI or map a network drive on the appliance's vmware_flr network share directly to the client to which they wish to restore files.

For Linux clients, a link to a script on the appliance is provided (at https://appliance_ip/iscsi_flr) so that the user can download and run it on the VM to which they want to restore files.

Once the files have been restored, the user should then disconnect the share and the iSCSI target (if this method was used), go back to the RRC, and select Tear Down to remove the image.

Hyper-V Restore

The Hyper-V Restore screen allows you to restore a Hyper-V Server backup. At the top of the screen you will see the name of the virtual machine, as well as the backup (or list of backups) that will be restored.

The available types of restore are:

In a clustered VM, the user would use the Hyper-V cluster client in RRC to restore a VM. Typically a VM can be restored to any node of the cluster irrespective of where the VM was running at the time of the backup except in following situation.

A clustered VM using typical Share Volume can only be restored to the node who is the current owner of the resource group containing the VM resource.

If a VM is active on a node in cluster and if the user tries to restore the same VM to another node, restore would fail. The Hyper-V agent would detect this condition and would instruct the user to take the VM and its configuration in cluster offline before performing a restore.

Since Hyper-V VSS writer deletes the VM before restoring it, this option can’t be used to restore a VM from previous backup while the same VM is currently running. However one can restore the VM files using Restore to Alternate Location and create a new VM using Hyper-V manager.

This option is not available for VMs protected by cluster service.