Manage snapshots and snapshot actions - x360Recover

Written By Tami Sutcliffe (Super Administrator)

Updated at July 16th, 2021

For each recovery point, there are a series of actions that can be performed by selecting one of the buttons in the Actions menu.

Starting VM

  1. Selecting Start VM will virtualize the chosen recovery point and boot the Protected System from that point in time on the Appliance. There are a number of customizable options available when virtualizing a Protected System.
  2. Set the amount of RAM and number of CPU (cores) that will be available for the virtual system.
  3. Select Mode: Test Mode or Live Mode.
    • Test Mode boots the virtual machine in a private network for testing. Any changes made to the virtual machine hard disk images will be destroyed when the system is shutdown.
    • Live Mode boots the virtual machine on the same LAN as the Appliance management interface. The selected Recovery Point will be marked as Persistent and any changes made to the virtual machine disk volumes will not be lost when the system is shutdown. After running in Live Mode you may shut down the system and perform a Bare Metal Restore or Disk Export of the VM from this persistent snapshot to retain all data changes made while your Protected System was virtualized on the Appliance.

NOTE

Live mode is intended to be used as an emergency recovery method for Protected Systems that have become damaged/lost and need to be restored to service urgently or when other recovery methods would cause unacceptable downtime.

You should perform a recovery of any system running in Live Mode back to physical and virtual hardware as soon as possible in order to re-establish redundancy.

  1. Select a Boot Key to send that key stroke to the virtual machine after BIOS POST completes and enables access to the virtual BIOS or Windows Startup menu during system boot.
  2. Select Boot Device and CD-ROM Image to allow for booting of the Protected System from a CD image for diagnostic or testing purposes. For example, to perform startup repair when performing a Live Mode system recovery.
  3. In the Password field, enter a password if an Encryption passphrase was entered when installing the Agent.

    For information on configuring and using Virt-IO drivers, refer to the Using VirtIO in a VM article.

When a virtual machine is running, the snapshot actions will change. Start VM will become Stop VM, and an additional button, Terminal, will be present in the Actions list for the chosen recovery point. Other actions will be grayed out.

If you select Terminal, this will open a new browser window displaying the running virtual machine console. Please ensure that your web browser is configured to allow popups before starting a VM or selecting Terminal.

Mount

  1. Selecting Mount will mount all of the Protected System’s disks that were selected for backup on the Appliance or Vault and make them accessible from the File Browser tab of the menu.
  2. If an Encryption Passphrase was entered during the Agent installation, you will be prompted to enter the Password.
  3. To use the Mount option for individual file recovery, select the desired recovery point and click Mount, then browse down using the File Browser to the file(s) you would like to recover. Download the files you are looking for by right-clicking them from the right side window.

    For instructions on performing bulk recovery of files or folders, refer to the Recovering Files and Folders article.

    For instructions on recovering complete systems, refer to the Bare Metal Recovery article.

Export

  1. Selecting Export will create a virtual disk image file for some or all of the protected disk volumes on the system. You may elect to selectively export specific disk volumes if you desire. By default, the images are generated in the ExportVMs folder on the Appliance or Vault within the Storage Pool, and can be accessed using the File Browser or via the NFS Export feature. An option exists to export the disk images to an attached USB drive if you prefer.
  2. Select the Volumes you would like to Export.
  3. Select your desired format from the available radio buttons:
    • VMDK (VMware)
    • VDI (VirtualBox)
    • VHD (Hyper-V Gen1 or Xen)
    • VHDX (Hyper-V Gen2)
    • RAW (KVM)
  4. If you entered an Encryption Passphrase during the installation of the Agent, you will be prompted for it in the Password field.
  5. After selecting your desired format, and entering your password (if necessary), select the Start button to begin the export process.

    You can monitor the progress of the Export from the Conversion tab on the Jobs Menu Pane.

Start iSCSI

Start iSCSI presents the disk volumes of the selected recovery point as iSCSI Targets, which you can access by remote systems capable of running an iSCSI Initiator (For example, Microsoft Windows iSCSI Initiator is located in Control Panel under Administrative Tools).

You can utilize iSCSI for bulk recovery of files or direct virtualization of Protected Systems on third-party hypervisors like VMware or Hyper-V. 

For instructions on performing bulk recovery of files or folders, refer to the Recovering Files and Folders   article. For instructions on recovering complete systems, refer to the VM Recovery article or the Hyper-V Recovery article.

  1. In the iSCSI Settings section, select to enable iSCSI for a recovery point in Test Mode or Live Mode.

    Similar to Start VM, when the recovery point is exported in Test Mode, it is then destroyed when iSCSI has stopped; any changes made to the disk volumes are lost.

    When started in Live Mode, a persistent recovery point is created and any changes to data are retained.

    Persistent recovery points created by Start VM and Start iSCSI are interchangeable. For example, a virtual machine recovered using Live Mode virtualization may be shut down and then exported via iSCSI in Live Mode, preserving the data changes that have been made to the disks so that they can be recovered to new physical or virtual hardware.
  2. If an Encryption Passphrase was entered during the installation of the Agent, enter it in the Password field.
  3. Click Start.

  4. To connect to the exported targets from a Windows system, launch iSCSI Initiator from Control Panel -> Administrative Tools.  
  5. From the iSCSI Initiator Properties screen, enter the IP address of the Appliance or Vault in the Target field and click Quick Connect.  Disk LUN’s should be enumerated in the Discovered Targets field.
  6. Select each LUN and click Connect to mount it.

Delete Snapshot

Expanding the Used Snapshots section on the Protected Systems Details page will display all recovery points that are currently in use (for example, Mounted or running as a VM) and provide the appropriate option to close it if possible (for example, Dismount or Stop iSCSI, and so forth).

Snapshots in use by Running VM’s, Mounted, being Exported, or currently exposed as iSCSI targets will be listed as, in-use.

NOTE: Snapshots in use by Export cannot be closed from the Used Snapshots view. You must wait for the Export process to complete before the snapshot will be closed automatically.