Restoring cloud snapshots

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With transparent cloud tiering enabled, snapshot versions of volumes are stored on the cloud storage that is provided by a supported cloud service provider. You can restore data from the cloud back to the system from any snapshot version to recover from data loss on the system.

A volume cannot be used for restoring data from the cloud if the volume is used in any of the following capacities:

  • The volume is part of a remote-copy relationship.
  • The volume is a VMware vSphere Virtual Volume.

Using the management GUI

To restore a snapshot generation from cloud storage to the system, complete these steps:
  1. In the management GUI, select Volumes > Cloud Volumes.
  2. Right-click the volume to display all snapshot versions that are available to restore and select Restore.
  3. On the Restore page, select the snapshot version that you want to restore to the system and click Next.
  4. Select the target volume from the following options:
    Restore to the production volume
    The snapshot version is restored to the production volume, which is the original volume from which the snapshots were created. After the restore operation completes, the snapshot version completely replaces the current data that exists on production volume. During the restore operation, the production volume goes offline until it completes. If you do not want to have the production volume offline for the restore, you can restore a cloud snapshot to a new volume. The production volume remains online and host operations are not disrupted.
    Restore to a new volume
    When the snapshot version is restored to a new volume, you can use the restored data independent of the original volume from which the snapshot was created. If the new volume exists on the system, then the restore operation uses the unique identifier (UID) of the new volume. If the new volume does not exist on the system, you need to choose whether to use the UID from the original volume or create a new UID. If you plan on using the new volume on the same system, use the UID that is associated with the snapshot version that is being restored. For the new volume, enter the following information:
    Name
    Enter the name of the new volume to which the snapshot version is restored.
    Pool
    Select a pool from the list. Compressed, thin-provisioned, and deduplicated volumes must be in data reduction pools.
    Capacity savings
    Select either None, Thin-provisioning, or Compression. For any of these options you can also select to use deduplication for the volume that you create. For example, you can create a compressed volume that also uses deduplication to remove duplicate data.
    I/O group
    Select the I/O group or select the system to decide for volume.
  5. Click Next.
  6. Review the Summary page, and click Finish.

Using the command-line interface

You can use the CLI to either restore a snapshot directly to the production volume or to a new volume.

Restoring to a production volume

Before restoring a snapshot version of a cloud volume, determine the available snapshot versions by entering the following command:
lsvolumebackupgeneration -volume volume_id_or_name
where volume_id_or_name is either the name of the volume or ID.
To restore the most recent version of the snapshot to the production volume, enter the following command:
restorevolume -generation gen_id volume_id_or_name
where gen_id is the identifier of the most recent version of a snapshot on cloud storage and volume_id_or_name is the name of the production volume that the data is being restored to.
To restore an older version of a snapshot on cloud storage to the production volume, enter the following command:
restorevolume -generation gen_id -deletelatergenerations volume_id_or_name
where gen_id is the identifier of the most recent version of a snapshot on cloud storage and volume_id_or_name is the name of the production volume that the data is being restored to. To restore an older version of the cloud snapshot, you must specify the -deletelatergenerations parameter to confirm the deletion of all later versions of the snapshot.

Restoring to a new volume

You can also restore a snapshot version for a volume that might not exist on the local system. In this case, the unique identifier of the volume snapshot data is used. You can also restore the entire snapshot by replacing the volume UID with the UID of the volume that was originally used for the snapshot. Ensure that the UID is not currently used on any other volume in the system. To restore a snapshot version to the selected volume and retain the UID for that volume, enter the following command: 
restorevolume -fromuid volume_UID -restoreuid -generation gen_id volume_id_or_name
where volume_UID is the unique identifier of the volume snapshot data that is being restored to the local system, gen_id is the identifier of the most version of a snapshot for that volume, and volume_id_or_name is the name or ID of the volume.
In case you want to restore data on new volume without replacing volume UID of original volume, enter the following command: 
restorevolume -fromuid volume_UID -generation gen_id volume_id_or_name
where volume_UID is the unique identifier of the volume snapshot data that is being restored to the local system, gen_id is the identifier of the most version of a snapshot for that volume, and volume_id_or_name is the name or ID of the volume that it is being restored to.