Understanding Live Recovery
Live Recovery is a feature of restoring data in Rapid Recovery Core. If your protected machine experiences data failure of a non-system Windows volume, you can restore data from a recovery point on the Rapid Recovery Core. Selecting Live Recovery in the Restore Machine Wizard allows users to immediately continue business operations with near-zero downtime. Live Recovery during restore gives you immediate access to data, even while Rapid Recovery continues to restore data in the background. This feature allows near-zero recovery-time, even if the restore involves terabytes of data.
Rapid Recovery Core uses unique block-based backup and recovery technology that allows full user access to target servers during the recovery process. Requested blocks are restored on-demand for seamless recovery.
Live Recovery applies to physical and virtual machines protected by Rapid Recovery Agent, with the following exclusions:
- Live Recovery is accessible to Windows volumes, excluding system volumes. The C:\ drive and the system-reserved partition cannot be restored using Live Recovery.
- Live Recovery is accessible to Windows-based volumes using the Rapid Recovery Agent. Agentless volumes or Linux volumes cannot take advantage of Live Recovery.
Live Recovery lets you instantly restore physical or virtual servers directly from the backup file. When a non-system volume is being restored, Rapid Recovery presents the volume metadata to the operating system instantly, making that data available on demand. For example, if the database volume of Microsoft Exchange is corrupt, Live Recovery can restore the volume, database, and Exchange services in minutes.
This feature provides the fastest method of recovering large quantities of data with minimal downtime. Users can immediately continue business operations.
Once Live Recovery begins, the restored volume and its contents become instantly available. Rapid Recovery Core continues to restore the data in the background, even though the volume, its data, applications and services are already back in production. If specific data is requested, the background process prioritizes the restoration of this data immediately. This powerful functionality allows even the most stringent service-level agreement to be met.
Once you start Live Recovery, metadata (directory structure, security descriptors, NTFS file attributes, free space map, and so on) of the target volume is quickly restored on the protected machine. Thereafter, the volume and its contents become available to the system. The Rapid Recovery Agent begins restoring data blocks from the Rapid Recovery Core server, writing the blocks to the target volume.
Requests for data that has not yet been restored are immediately answered, with the requesting program or system unaware that the blocks were just restored.
Restoring data from recovery points
Rapid Recovery protects your data on Windows and Linux machines. Backups of protected machines are saved to the repository associated with your Rapid Recovery Core as recovery points. From these recovery points, you can restore your data using one of the following methods.
- From the Rapid Recovery Core Console, you can restore entire volumes from a recovery point of a non-system volume, replacing the volumes on the destination machine. This process uses the Restore Machine Wizard. For more information, see About restoring volumes from a recovery point.
- You can also restore entire volumes on Linux machines from recovery points using the command line from the protected Linux machine. For more information on using the command line local_mount utility, see Restoring volumes for a Linux machine using the command line.
When restoring data for agentlessly protected machines only, the Volume Mapping page of the Restore Machine Wizard includes the option Restore all configuration data. This option is associated with the VM configuration and restore feature. For more information, see VMware VM configuration backup and restore.
You cannot restore a volume that contains the operating system directly from a recovery point, because the machine to which you are restoring is using the operating system and drivers that are included in the restore process. If you want to restore from a recovery point to a system volume (for example, the C drive of the protected machine), you must perform a Bare Metal Restore (BMR). This involves creating a bootable image from the recovery point, which includes operating system and configuration files as well as data. You then start the target machine from that bootable image to complete the restore. The boot image differs if the machine you want to restore uses a Windows operating system or a Linux operating system. If you want to restore from a recovery point to a system volume on a Windows machine, see Performing a bare metal restore using the Restore Machine Wizard. If you want to restore from a recovery point of a system volume on a Linux machine, see Performing a bare metal restore for Linux machines.
If you have a software RAID on a Linux machine protected by Rapid Recovery Agent release 6.2 or later, you can restore the software RAID from a recovery point.
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NOTE: Since this feature was introduced in release 6.2, it is not compatible for snapshots taken on earlier Agent versions. If you upgrade Rapid Recovery Agent to release 6.2 or later and then capture snapshots in your Rapid Recovery Core, you will be able to restore the software RAID from the new snapshots. |
Finally, in contrast to restoring entire volumes, you can mount a recovery point from a Windows machine, and browse through individual folders and files to recover only a specific set of files. For more information, see Restoring a directory or file using Windows Explorer. If you need to perform this while preserving original file permissions (for example, when restoring a user’s folder on a file server), see Restoring a directory or file and preserving permissions using Windows Explorer.
The topics in this section describe information about restoring data on physical machines. For more information on exporting protected data from a recovery point to a virtual machine, see VM export.
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NOTE: When recovering data on Windows machines, if the volume that you are restoring has Windows data deduplication enabled, you will need to make sure that deduplication is also enabled on the Core server. |
VM configuration backup and restore for VMware and Hyper-V
You can back up and restore your VM configuration for supported hypervisors using Rapid Recovery.
Rapid Recovery Core release 6.4 introduces a new feature, the ability to back up and restore VMware VM configurations, including the option to include VM configurations during virtual export to VMware/ESXi virtual machines.
Backup. Rapid Recovery Core release 6.3 and later automatically saves agentlessly protected VMware/ESXi virtual machine configurations in each volume image when snapshots are captured. Rapid Recovery Core release 6.4 and later also captures agentlessly protected Hyper-V VM configurations.
The relevant files are saved in the custom metadata for each respective VM volume, and includes hypervisor version information to ensure compatibility. For example, for VMware, VM configurations are stored in .vmx files, and related BIOS settings are stored in .nvram files. For Hyper-V, VM configurations are stored in .vmcx files.
Restore. Optionally, when restoring data from a recovery point of an agentlessly protected Hyper-V or ESXi machine, you can choose whether to include in the VM all VM configurations and data, or only the data. This choice is presented in the UI through the Restore all configuration data check box. This option appears only for Hyper-V or VMware machines protected agentlessly (replacing the Show advanced options check box that is relevant only for machines protected by Rapid Recovery Agent). When the Restore all configuration data option is selected, all VM configurations for volumes being recovered are restored. When the option is cleared, only data (and not VM configurations) are restored for those volumes.
Virtual export. Optionally, when performing virtual export from a recovery point of an agentlessly protected Hyper-V or ESXi machine, you can choose whether to export all VM configurations and data, or export only the data. This choice is presented in the UI through the Restore all configuration data check box. This option appears only for agentlessly protected Hyper-V or ESXi machines. When the option is selected, all VM configurations for volumes being exported to a VM are included in the exported VM. When the option is cleared, only data (and not VM configurations) are included in the exported VM.
Based on the restore or virtual export type, The Restore all configuration data option is selected by default in the following situations:
- When restoring data or performing virtual export from a recovery point to the same agentless virtual machine.
- When performing virtual export to a different server of the same hypervisor type. For example, when exporting from a vCenter/ESXi recovery point to a different ESXi VM, or from a Hyper-V recover point a different Hyper-V VM. For both ESXi and Hyper-V, there is no backward compatibility between hypervisor versions.
Otherwise, the Restore all configuration data option is not selected by default, although you can change the default option by selecting or clearing this setting.
About the file search and restore feature
The Rapid Recovery file search and restore feature lets you find one or more files in the recovery points of a protected machine. You can then restore one or more of the results to a local disk.
Searching guidelines
On the File Search page of the Core Console, you can search for a file from a set of recovery points from the machine that you select. The search criteria are divided into two groups: basic and advanced.
The basic group includes the following parameters:
- The protected machine whose recovery points you want to search.
- A time range that limits the search to only recovery points that were created between the start time and end time.
- The name or mask of the file that you want to find. You can use the "?" wildcard to replace any single character and the "*" to replace zero or multiple characters; however, more specific filenames produce more specific results.
- A list of paths to directories in which to search.
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NOTE: All basic criteria is required. If no directory is provided, Rapid Recovery searches all volumes of the specified protected machine. |
The More Options button reveals the advanced group, which includes the following parameters:
- The option to search recursively in subdirectories of the search location or only in the specified location.
- The ability to run an algorithm that increases the speed of searches on NTFS volumes.
- The ability to limit the number of search results to a more manageable sum.
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NOTE: Specific search criteria produce faster and more accurate your search results. Including subdirectories (for example, |
Because the feature continues to search through recovery points and locations even after the requested file is found, you can pause or stop a search before it completes. You can run multiple searches can simultaneously, but you cannot begin them at the same time. For example, to find another file, you can begin a second search while the first search is still in progress. However, you can only search one protected machine at a time.
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NOTE: In the previous example, pausing the first search makes more memory available for the second search, which helps the second search finish faster. Running multiple searches at one time is memory intensive and increases the amount of time it takes to complete a search. |
Each search appears as a tab on the page. When you are finished searching, you can close the tabs individually or all at once.
Restoring guidelines
After you find the file, you can restore it directly from the File Search page.
The file search and restore feature limits restoring capabilities to only locations on the Core. You cannot restore a file to a protected machine.