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Performing File-Level Restore

In case a disaster strikes, you can recover corrupted or missing files of an EC2 instance from a cloud-native snapshot or image-level backup. Veeam Backup for AWS allows you to download the necessary files and folders to a local machine or restore the files and folders to the source EC2 instance using the file-level recovery browser.

Important

You can restore files and folders from the following file systems:

Microsoft Windows systems — FAT, FAT32, NTFS (with cluster size not larger than 64 KB).
Linux systems — ext2, ext3, ext4, XFS, Btrfs.

Veeam Backup for AWS supports file-level restore only for Microsoft Windows basic volumes.

How EC2 File-Level Restore Works

To recover files and folders of a backed-up EC2 instance, Veeam Backup for AWS performs the following steps:

Launches a worker instance in either of the following AWS Regions:

To restore files and folders from a cloud-native snapshot or a snapshot replicas, Veeam Backup for AWS launches the worker instance in the AWS Region where the source EC2 snapshot or snapshot replica resides.
To restore files and folders from an image-level backup, Veeam Backup for AWS launches the worker instance in the AWS Region where the backup repository with backed-up data resides.

Attaches and mounts EBS volumes of the 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.

[This step applies only if you perform restore to the original location] Installs the Veeam restore tool to the source EC2 instance.
Launches the file-level recovery browser on the worker instance.

The file-level recovery browser displays the file system tree of the backed-up EC2 instance. In the browser, you select the necessary files and folders to restore.

Saves the selected files and folders to the local machine or restores them to the source EC2 instance if the Additional restore mode is enabled.
Unmounts and detaches EBS volumes of the backed-up EC2 instance from the worker instance.
[This step applies only if you perform restore to the original location] Removes the Veeam restore tool from the source EC2 instance if the Keep the restore tool at the target instance option is not selected.
Removes the worker instance from Amazon EC2.

How to Perform EC2 File-Level Restore

Before you start file-level restore, check considerations and limitations described in section Before You Begin.

To recover files and folders of a protected EC2 instance, do the following: