Restoring Guest Files and Folders for Azure

You can restore files and folders from an Azure virtual machine backup.

Considerations

You can back up virtual machines configured with Azure unmanaged and managed disks. From these backups, you can restore full virtual machines and restore guest files and folders. Live browse and restore is not supported for VMs that are encrypted with either volume or disk encryption.

Before You Begin

• Use different VM groups for UNIX and Windows VMs. You cannot browse and restore files for both operating systems in the same job.

• To restore UNIX files for ext2, ext3, ext4, XFS, JFS, HFS, HFS Plus, and Btrfs file systems, configure the hypervisor to use a File Recovery Enabler for Linux.

• For files stored on Windows Storage Spaces, you can perform a live browse to view and restore guest files and folders, with the following considerations:

  • The VSA proxy or the MediaAgent that is used for the live browse must be running Windows Server 2012 or a more recent version.

  • You cannot simultaneously browse two cloned VMs that use the same storage space information.

Procedure

1. From the navigation pane, go to Solutions > Virtualization.

   The Hypervisors tab appears.

2. Click the hypervisor.

   The hypervisor page appears. The VM groups area displays summary information for any existing VM groups.

3. On the VM groups tab, in the row for the VM group, click the action button , and then click Restore.

   The Select restore type page appears.

4. To restore from a specific copy of backup data, in the upper-right corner of the page, from the Select source list, select the copy.

   If you select Automatic (default), the restore operation searches for the requested data in the primary copy, and automatically selects a different copy if the data is not found in the primary copy.

5. Select Guest files to restore files or folders.

   The Restore page appears.

6. Expand the tree on the left and select the objects to be restored on the right. Select an item or click on an entry in the Name column to browse within an item. For hierarchical data such as files, folders, and disks, you can click an entry in the path listing above the right pane to return to a higher level of the hierarchy.

   In the top right corner of the page, a "Showing" message indicates what backup data is being displayed. You can click the down arrow beside this message and select any of the following options:

   • Show latest backups: Only display data for the most recent backups.

   • Show backups as of a specific date: Only display data up to the date you specify.

   • Show backups for a date range: Only display data within the data range you specify.

7. Click Restore.

8. In the Restore to dialog box, specify the destination for recovered files.

   By default, files are restored to the proxy that performed the backup.

   • To restore in place, leave the value in the Destination list.

   • To restore to a different proxy:

     1. Change the value in the Destination list box to use a different proxy.

        Note

        Only proxies with the file system agent installed are available to select.

     2. Optional: To use the Impersonate user option, type the host name and credentials for the new destination.

        By default, the Local System account on the destination client is used to perform the restore operation; but you can use the Impersonate user option to provide credentials for another user account.

        The user must have permissions to create files in the specified location on the destination.

     3. For the Path box, type a full path or click Browse to select a destination folder.

9. To delete an existing file and replace it with the restored file, select Overwrite if it already exists.

10. Click Submit to run the restore job.