How to Restore an Archiving File System

With archiving file systems, you can configure the archiver to write copies of files to archive media. After files are archived, information about the files can be captured in a recovery point. In the event of a disaster, you can then use the recovery point file to restore the files or the file system itself.

You can restore file systems using any recovery point, including recovery points generated by other file systems, as long as the archived file data from the file system is accessible.

You can also use multiple recovery points to restore files into a single file system. Conversely, you can use a single recovery point to restore file data into multiple file systems. For example, you could restore directory dir1 from recovery point file snapshot1 into file system mysam, and also restore directory dir2 from snapshot2 into the same file system (mysam). You could also restore directory dira from recovery point file snapshot3 into file system sam1 and directory dirb from the same recovery point file (snapshot3) to a different file system, for example sam2.

For information about planning recovery points, see Planning Recovery Points.

To restore a file system if the software version 4 update 6 is installed:

  1. From the Manage Hosts menu or the Managed Hosts page, choose the name of the server on which the file system is located.
  2. In the navigation tree, select File Browser under File Browsing and Recovery.
  3. Select the file system mount point in the Current Directory drop-down list.

    The file system files and directories are displayed in the table.

  4. Select the Recovery Point radio button at the top of the table, and then select a recovery point date from the drop-down list.
  5. If you cannot find the recovery point date in the drop-down list, follow these steps to bring the recovery point file online for browsing:
    1. In the navigation tree, select Recovery Points under File Browsing and Recovery.
    2. Select the radio button next to the recovery point.
    3. Click Create Index.

      An index file is created. If the recovery point file was compressed using the compress utility, a new decompressed version of the recovery point file is also created. The original version of the recovery point file remains on the server. Files compressed with gzip do not requiring decompressing.


      Note - If the recovery point is a headerless file created using the Sun SAM samfsdump(1M) command with the -H option, the system cannot index the recovery point, and you cannot restore the file system using that recovery point with the SAM-QFS Manager software. For information on restoring data using these files, see the SAM-QFS Troubleshooting wiki.


    4. Return to the File Browser page and follow steps 3 and 4 above.
  6. (Optional) Click Browse to select a different directory from which to display the recovery point.
  7. Do one or more of the following to find the files that you want to restore:
  8. To restore the whole file system, select Restore Entire Recovery Point from the Operations menu. Alternatively, to restore a file or directory, follow these steps:
    1. Select the radio button next to the file or directory in the Recovery Point Entries table and select Restore from the Operations menu.
    2. Specify the location to which you want to restore the file or directory.

      By default, the location is the path of the original file or directory, relative to the mount point of the file system. You can specify a different path relative to the mount point, or you can specify an absolute path on any archiving file system.

    3. Specify the action you want the system to take if the file already exists in the location to which you are restoring files.
  9. From the Online Status After Restoring menu, choose the actions that you want the file system to take after completing the restore process.
  10. Click Submit.