Restore from Linux, Unix and Other File Systems

The method of restore from Linux, Unix and other file systems helps you restore files of Linux, Solaris, BSD, Novell Storage Services, Unix and Mac workloads. For the list of supported OSes and file systems, see Supported Platforms and Applications.

You can restore files from the following types of data:

• Backups
• Replicas
• Storage snapshots

For more information on how restore from storage snapshots works, see the Linux, Unix and Other File System Restore from Storage Snapshots section in the Storage System Snapshot Integration Guide.

You can restore files to the original or new location, access restored files using FTP or launch application item restore for the files. For more information, see Finalize Restore.

How Restore Works

When you perform guest OS file restore, Veeam Backup & Replication provides the following options for mounting VM disks from the backup or replica:

• Mounting disks to a helper host. As a helper host, you can select the target host where you want to restore files from the backup or any other Linux server. We recommend you to specify the same server to which you want to restore the files. This will improve the performance.
• Mounting disks to a helper appliance. The helper appliance is a helper VM running a stripped down Linux kernel that has minimal set of components. The appliance is quite small — around 50 MB. It requires 2048 MB RAM and 2 CPU.

When you perform guest OS file restore, Veeam Backup & Replication performs the following operations:

1. [If you have selected to mount disks to helper appliance] Veeam Backup & Replication deploys the helper appliance on the ESXi host in the virtual infrastructure.
2. Veeam Backup & Replication mounts disks of a VM from the backup or replica to the host selected as a helper host or helper appliance. The backup file or VM replica itself remains in the read-only state in the backup repository or datastore.
3. Veeam Backup & Replication launches the Veeam Backup browser where mounted VM disks are displayed. You can browse the VM guest file system in the Veeam Backup browser and restore files or folders to the original VM or to another location. Also, you can enable an FTP server on the virtual appliance and allow VM owners to restore files themselves.
4. The operations differ depending on which restore command you use:

• The Restore or Restore to command to restore files to the original location or to another VMware vSphere VM.

If you have installed the Linux Management Agent, the helper host or helper appliance connects to the VM to which you restore files (target VM) using this agent and restores files. This is the preferred way of connection.

If the backup server fails to connect to the Management Agent, the backup server connects to the target VM over SSH. If the SSH connection also fails, Veeam Backup & Replication uses networkless processing over VIX API/vSphere Web Services. Then Veeam Backup & Replication deploys on the VM a temporary agent which performs restore.

• The Copy to command to restore files to a new location.

The helper host or helper appliance connects to the VM to which you restore files (target VM) over SSH. Then Veeam Backup & Replication deploys on the VM the agent which performs restore.

5. When you close the Veeam Backup browser or it is closed by timeout, Veeam Backup & Replication unmounts the content of the backup file or replica from the helper appliance or helper host.
6. [If you have selected to mount disks to helper appliance] Veeam Backup & Replication unregisters the helper appliance on the ESXi host.

Related Topics

Restoring VM Guest OS Files (Multi-OS)