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File-Level Restore

In case of a disaster, you can restore corrupted or missing files and folders from a cloud-native snapshot, snapshot replica or image-level backup.

Veeam Backup for AWS uses a worker instance as a staging server to perform file-level restore. During the restore process, Veeam Backup for AWS launches the worker instance and mounts EBS volumes of a backed-up EC2 instance to it. Once the EBS volumes are mounted, Veeam Backup for AWS allows you to use the Veeam Backup browser to find and save the necessary files and folders to the local machine.

Important

Veeam Backup for AWS supports file-level restore only for simple volumes. You can restore files and folders from the following file systems:

Microsoft Windows systems — FAT, FAT32, NTFS.
Linux systems — ext2, ext3, ext4, XFS, Btrfs.

How File-Level Restore Works

Veeam Backup for AWS performs file-level restore in the following way:

Launches a worker instance per each EC2 instance in the restore task.

If you restore files and folders from cloud-native snapshots or snapshot replicas, Veeam Backup for AWS launches the worker instance in an AWS region where the original EC2 instance resides.
If you restore files and folders from image-level backups, Veeam Backup for AWS launches the worker instance in an AWS region where an S3 repository with backed-up data resides.

Mounts EBS volumes of a backed-up EC2 instance to the worker instance.

EBS volumes are not physically extracted from the backup — Veeam Backup for AWS emulates their presence on the worker instance. The source backup itself remains in the read-only state.

Launches the Veeam Backup browser where the file system tree of the backed-up EC2 instance is displayed.

In the Veeam Backup browser, you select files and folders to restore.

Saves the selected files and folders to the local machine.

Note that Veeam Backup for AWS transfers restored data over the internet if the local machine runs outside of AWS.

When the restore process is complete or the restore session is stopped by timeout, Veeam Backup for AWS unmounts EBS volumes of the backed-up EC2 instance from the worker instance and removes the worker instance from Amazon EC2.