Restore Verification for Image-Based Backups
Restore verification is a special feature that allows an image-based backup validity check and its readiness for a valid restore.
This chapter covers the following topics:
- How It Works
- System Requirements
- Run Restore Verification
- Enable Restore Verification in Backup Plan
- Restore Verification in Long-term storage.
How It Works
Restore verification is an auxiliary restore plan that retrieves only necessary backup parts from backup storage, mounts a Hyper-V virtual machine on the fly, then performs a system logon.
Restore verification is supported by Windows 8 (Pro and Enterprise editions) and later versions, and Windows Server 2012 and later versions.
System Requirements
Since the restore verification feature is based on Hyper-V mechanisms, a Hyper-V environment is required on your operating system.
The table below contains the list of supported Windows versions and editions.
| Windows Version | Supported Editions |
|---|---|
| Windows 8 | Enterprise, Pro |
| Windows 8.1 | Enterprise, Pro |
| Windows 10 | Enterprise, Pro, Education |
| Windows Server 2008 | Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter |
| Windows Server 2012 | Enterprise, Datacenter |
| Windows Server 2012 R2 | Essentials, Enterprise, Datacenter |
| Windows Server 2016 | Standard, Essentials, Datacenter |
| Windows Server 2019 | Standard, Essentials, Datacenter |
Run Restore Verification
To run a restore verification for image-based backup, perform the following steps:
- Switch to the Backup Storage tab.
- Find a required image-based backup plan run.
- Right-click on the required Restore Point, then select Restore Verification (BETA):
This creates and runs a test restore plan that starts a Hyper-V VM using a necessary part of the backed up data downloaded from backup storage. To check that the test virtual machine is running, see its state in the preview:
- Optionally, to log on to VM, click the Open Hyper-V VMC link.
Enable Restore Verification in Backup Plan
You can apply Restore Verification on a regular basis by including it in a backup plan.
To Enable Restore Verification
- Edit an image-based backup plan you intend to apply this feature.
- Follow the Backup Wizard steps to the Consistency Check and Restore Verification step.
- Select the restore verification run option:
- Do not Run Restore Verification. Select this option to run restore verification manually
- Run for Full only. Select this option to run restore verification for full backups only. You can manage a schedule for full and incremental backups on the Schedule step of the Backup Wizard
- Run for Incremental only. Select this option to run restore verification for incremental backups only. You can manage a schedule for full and incremental backups on the Schedule step of the Backup Wizard
- Run for Full and Incremental. Select this option to run restore verification for both backup types.
4.Click Advanced Settings to specify Hyper-V VM settings:
- In the Screenshot Interval, specify the frequency of making a screenshot of a Hyper-V VM to check its state by sight
- In the Number of virtual processors, specify the number of virtual CPUs for Hyper-V VM
- In the Startup RAM, specify the part RAM allocated for restore verification VM
- In Report Failure if it is not detected in: field, specify the period of
5.Click OK.
6.Follow other Backup Wizard steps to save the configuration of this backup plan.
In some cases, if a volume with a temporary folder is full, a restore verification can terminate with the following error: Cannot complete Restore Verification. Not enough space in the temporary folder: c:\temp
Once this error occurs, clean up the temporary folder, or change its location to the other volume with more free space.
**To Change the Temporary Folder Location **
- In the Tools menu, select Options.
- Switch to the Memory Options tab.
- In the Temporary folder field, specify the temporary folder location.
- Click OK or Apply.
To learn more about Hyper-V, refer to the Virtualization article at docs.microsoft.com.
Restore Verification in Long-Term Storage
In case your storage destination is a long-term one (this can be S3 Glacier, S3 Deep Archive, or Azure Archive storage classes), Restore Verification is disabled.
Since Restore Verification requires downloading parts of data from a cloud, in a case with long-term storage it will take up significant time, up to several hours. Additionally, retrieval costs are subject to extra charges on backup data downloads from the cloud.