Restoring files

Recover files from snapshots that are created by IBM Spectrum Protect Plus backup jobs. Files can be restored to their original or an alternate location.

Before you begin

Note the following procedures and considerations before restoring a file:

Review the file indexing and restore requirements in File indexing and restore requirements.
Run a backup job with catalog file metadata enabled. Follow these guidelines:
- Ensure that credentials are established for the associated virtual machine as well as the alternate virtual machine destination through the Guest OS Username and Guest OS Password option within the backup job definition.
- Ensure that the virtual machine can be accessed from the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus appliance either through DNS or hostname. In a Windows environment, the default security policy uses the Windows NTLM protocol, and the user identity follows the default domain\name format if the Hyper-V virtual machine is attached to a domain. The format local_administrator is used if the user is a local administrator.
- For a file restore to complete successfully, ensure that the user ID that is on the target machine has the necessary ownership permissions for the file that is being restored. If a file was created by a user that differs from the user ID that is restoring the file based on Windows security credentials, the file restore job fails.

About this task

Restrictions:

Encrypted Windows file systems are not supported for file cataloging or file restore.
File indexing and file restore are not supported from restore points that were offloaded to cloud resources or repository servers.
When restoring files in a Resilient File System (ReFS) environment, restores from newer versions of Windows Server to earlier versions are not supported. For example, restoring a file from Windows Server 2016 to Windows Server 2012.
File cataloging, backup, point-in-time restores, and other operations that invoke the Windows agent will fail if a non-default local administrator is entered as the Guest OS Username when defining a backup job. A non-default local administrator is any user that has been created in the guest OS and has been granted the administrator role.
This occurs if the registry key LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy in [HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System] is set to 0 or not set. If the parameter is set to 0 or not set, a local non-default administrator cannot interact with WinRM, which is the protocol IBM Spectrum Protect Plus uses to install the Windows agent for file cataloging, send commands to this agent, and get results from it.

Set the LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy registry key to 1 on the Windows guest that is being backed up with Catalog File Metadata enabled. If the key does not exist, navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System] and add a DWord Registry key named LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy with a value of 1.

To help avoid issues that can result from time zone differences, use an NTP server to synchronize time zones across resources. For example, you can synchronize time zones for storage arrays, hypervisors, and application servers that are in your environment.

If the time zones are out of sync, you might experience errors during application registration, metadata cataloging, inventory, backup, or restore, or file restore jobs. For more information about identifying and resolving timer drift, see Time in virtual machine drifts due to hardware timer drift

Hyper-V considerations

Only volumes on SCSI disks are eligible for file cataloging and file restore.

Linux considerations

If data is located on LVM volumes, the lvm2-lvmetad service must be disabled because it can interfere with the ability of IBM Spectrum Protect Plus to mount and resign volume group snapshots or clones. To disable the service, complete the following steps:

Run the following commands:

systemctl stop lvm2-lvmetad

systemctl disable lvm2-lvmetad

Edit the/etc/lvm/lvm.conf and specify the following setting:
```
use_lvmetad = 0
```

If data resides on XFS file systems and the version of the xfsprogs package is between 3.2.0 and 4.1.9, the file restore can fail due to a known issue in xfsprogs that causes corruption of a clone or snapshot file system when its UUID is modified. To resolve this issue, update xfsprogs to version 4.2.0 or above. For more information, see Debian Bug report logs.

Procedure

To restore a file, complete the following steps.

In the navigation pane, click Manage Protection > File Restore.
Enter a search string to search for a file by name, and then click the search icon . For more information about using the search function, see Search guidelines.
Optional: You can use filters to fine-tune your search across specific virtual machines, date range in which the file was protected, and virtual machine operating system types.
Searches can also be limited to a specific folder through the Folder path field. The Folder path field supports wildcards. Position wildcards at the beginning, middle, or end of a string. For example, enter *Downloads to search within the Downloads folder without entering the preceding path.
Note: Only file objects for which a snapshot was taken during the date range that is specified will be visible. For those objects, when the arrow is clicked beside the file object, all previous snapshots for that file object are displayed.
To restore the file by using default options, click Restore. The file is restored to its original location.
To edit options before restoring the file, click Options. Set the file restore options.
Overwrite existing files/folder

Replace the existing file or folder with the restored file or folder.
Destination
Select to replace the existing file or folder with the restored file or folder.

To restore the file to its original location, select Restore files to original location.

To restore to a local destination different from the original location, select Restore files to alternative location. Then select the alternate location from available resources by using the navigation menu or the search function.
Restriction: A file can be restored to an alternate location only if credentials were established for the alternate virtual machine through the Guest OS Username/Password option in the backup job definition.

Enter the virtual machine folder path on the alternate destination in the Destination Folder field. If the directory does not exist, it will be created. Click Save to save the options.
To restore the file by using defined options, click Restore.