About the Restore Wizard
You use the Restore Wizard to complete these tasks:
• Select the source for restore operations
• Enter the password if the backup is encrypted
• Select items to restore
• Enter the destination
• Select other options
Select a Job that has at least one safeset. Click the Restore icon. This starts the Restore Wizard.
On the Welcome screen, click Next.
Selecting a Source
Choose a backup type from which to restore: Vault or Alternate safeset location.
Restore from a safeset or range of safesets
All safesets that have been created through backups, and that are still valid, are shown here.
For a single safeset, you must know (from the Job, date and safeset properties) which safeset you want to recover.
For a range of safesets, use the from and to menus. Note that the from date must be earlier than the to date. Also, older safesets restore before newer ones. You cannot select System State when you restore from multiple safesets. Cross-catalog searches
You can search through all available catalogs within the Restore Wizard.
Since cross-catalog searches are done on all available safesets, all corresponding catalogs are loaded. The number of safesets could be high, so if many catalogs fail to load, you can "break" the search and display only the files that were found so far.
Encryption Password
If you used an encryption password for the backup, you must enter it to restore. The password is not recorded anywhere on the backup, or the system. It is your responsibility to retain this password. Note that the password is case-sensitive.
Select Items to Restore
You can select some or all of the items that were backed up by the Job. Data Files – Add, Include/Exclude
CentralControl distinguishes between full and partial directory backups. If the entire directory has not been backed up, hidden file data such as security and reparse information is not backed up.
• To include items, click Add, select them, and click Include.
• To exclude items within your selection, highlight them, and click Exclude.
• If you select an entire directory, a confirmation screen appears. Click here
for more information.
System State
This selection allows you to recover all system files that were optionally included in the backup. All System State files that are eligible for recovery are shown in the lower pane.
System State recovery guidelines:
• System State data can only be restored on a local computer.
• You must restore all the System State data (Registry, COM+ Class Registration Database, Boot Files, etc.) that was backed up.
• Vault profiles, schedules and Jobs that are associated with a physical node in a cluster can have the system volume and System State backed up and restored.
• System State restores should not be done on a computer that has a system root location different from the root location where the backup was done.
• Ideally, System State restores should be performed on the same computer on which the backup occurred.
• To restore System State on a different computer, the new system must have the same or higher number of disk drives, and similar hardware configuration as the original computer.
Backup Catalog
Searching the Backup Catalog
The Search feature within the Restore wizard allows wildcard searches using the * (asterisk), ? (question mark), and . (period) characters.
In your search, you can use the asterisk to substitute for a string of data. For example, *.DAT or BOB.* could be used to search for BOB.DAT.
You can use the question mark to substitute for one character or multiple characters. For example, BO?.DAT could be used to search for BOB.DAT. Additionally, *.S?? could be used to search for BOB.S01.
You can use the period to signify a recursive directory. For example, use C:\.\*.doc to search for all files on drive C that have the doc file type. To further restrict your search, enter a path in the Search path field. Click OK to start your search.
Selecting from Search Results
After you enter your search criteria and click OK, the Include/Exclude Search Result screen will open. You might need to wait more than a few seconds for this to happen.
To include a file or directory, highlight it and click Include. To exclude a file or directory, highlight it and click Exclude. You must include at least one item in your recovery set.
The search can return huge numbers of items, so you will sometimes receive message prompts allowing you to "break" the search and display only the items that have been found so far.
System State Restore Options
This screen allows you to select how to restore your System State. For example, you may want to recover:
• To a previous version of the System State • From a system failure (identical hardware) • Active Directory (authoritative)
• Active Directory (non-authoritative) • Exchange server
• DNS/DHCP server • Cluster server
System files:
You can turn the Restore system files option on or off. It is on by default if your backup included system files.
Replicated data:
You can mark the selected data as Non Authoritative, Authoritative, or Primary. If you are restoring Windows 2008 or higher, you will see only Authoritative or Non Authoritative in the list.
If Authoritative is selected, the next field, Alternate location for SYSVOL restore data, is active.
Cluster services:
You can turn the Authoritative Restore of Cluster Only option on or off if your backup included cluster services.
ESX Console Plug-In Restore Options
Enable Register Virtual Machine to reregister the VM with the ESX Console. This will allow you to use the VM immediately after restoring.
Notes
• If you restore to a VM that already exists, upon reregistering, you will see an error message in the restore log (such as VMWR-E-0003 The
specified key, name or identifier already exists).
• You must revert to the last memory snapshot if you want the state of the VM to be the same as before the backup. See the documentation for the VMware ESX Console Plug-In for more information.
Destination Options Files and Folders
You can choose locations for restoring your files, as well as options for file overwriting and renaming.
Original or alternate location
Original location or alternate location: If you choose original, you can overwrite existing files.
Note: You can restore a backup from a UNC path to the original location. But if you attempt to restore to an alternate path, it will fail and log an error.
See also: Subdirectories
Overwriting and renaming options
• Rename files coming in from your recovery so that they don’t conflict with existing ones.
• Do not restore existing files by overwriting the existing ones. • Overwrite existing files with the restored ones.
Note: Renaming will append additional (cumulative) extensions to the file. These extensions start with .0001, then .0002, .0003, and so forth.
ESX Console Plug-In VMs
You can restore these VMs to their original locations (i.e., for live restores) or alternate datastores. Also, you can restore a VM as its component files to an alternate location.
VMs with multiple disks on multiple datastores will consolidate to a single datastore.
You can restore component files to an alternate location on disk, and then
register them manually. VM component files will be restored to directories whose names include the names of the datastores where the files originally resided. You cannot restore to the original location if a VM is already running there. You can restore if the VM is off — this will overwrite the old (existing) VM.
Subdirectories
For Agent versions 6.72 and later, you will not see the Preserve directory structure checkbox in the Restore Wizard. That is, you can now restore what you want, where you want. When you restore files to an alternate location, you always append the fully qualified path to the restore point.
So, for example, you can restore a subset of your backup elsewhere, and
preserve the subdirectory structure of your selection without appending a leading path to your restore point.
For Agents prior to version 6.72, when you restore to an alternate location, you can choose whether or not to recover your backups in their original directory configuration. If you choose not to create subdirectories, all of your files will be restored to one directory (in a flat structure).
If you choose to restore to the original location, the initial directory structure is recreated. When this option is selected, choosing not to create subdirectories has no effect.
To specify an alternate location, you can enter the location in the field, or click Browse to search for the location.
Note: If two files with the same name (but located in different volumes) are restored to the same alternate location, CentralControl does not distinguish between them. The first file is restored and then overwritten by the second file. This issue can be resolved by restoring the files to separate alternate locations, or to their original locations.
Advanced Restore Options
Here are the default settings for file-based restores:
Overwriting locked files
If you choose to overwrite locked files, these files will be replaced after restarting the machine on which the recovery Job was performed.
Restoring the Registry or NDS are options that are related to performing complete system recoveries. The Windows Registry stores almost all of the custom data that Windows uses.
The Novell Directory Service (NDS) is a multi-platform, distributed database that stores information about hardware and software resources available within a given network. The information may be shared by several servers in the form of a tree.
Restore all streams or data streams only
CentralControl stores the information from your files in various streams. The original data created by you is called the data stream. Other information, such as security settings, alternate data for other operating systems and file reference information, is stored in separate streams.
All streams recovers all information streams. This setting is recommended, provided that you are restoring files onto a system with an identical operating system. For cross-platform recovery, select Data streams only. This setting ensures that conflicts do not arise as a result of system-specific information streams.
To recover file security information, select Trustee/Restorations only. This setting is only available for NetWare.
Log file and detail level
The default setting is to create a log file whose detail level is Summary.
When you perform a complete system recovery ("Disaster Recovery") on a Unix platform, make sure that you have enough disk space for large recovery logs. In addition to Agent logging, entries for logging or auditing could come from the OS. File-level logging on a large file system can generate a very large log, which could consume the available or allocated disk space. If the logs occupy the same partition as the root file system, this could prevent the OS from starting.
Use all available bandwidth
By default, restores use all available bandwidth in order to run as fast as possible. If you prefer otherwise, clear this option. This allows the bandwidth
settings that were configured for the Agent to apply to the restore.
Disable prescanning - Unix
This option disables prescanning, so that any hard links are not searched for files, and only the links themselves are backed up. On a restore, the links are not followed for their files.