In my previous post (Hands On: N2WS Backup & Recovery) I took a look a some features of V3.1 of N2WS Backup & Recovery. I did show some of the nice features of the product, but I failed to really highlight the most important feature of the product: Recovery!
Anyone can backup, but the real heroes are those that can recover – Mike Spence
N2WS has 3 basic recovery modes:
- File Level Recovery
- Volume Recovery
- Instance Recovery
For the purposes of these recovery tests, I have a Microsoft SQL Server with 3 attached EBS Volumes. I’ll run through a recovery test using each of these modes.
File Level Recovery
This is probably the most common recovery scenario that you will run into. You may need to simply pull a file that a user/system may have deleted. N2WS allows you to do this through a web interface without having to spin up a new instance or recover a whole volume.
In this case, we just need to recover a some lost log files from the data volume of the SQL server. Select the backup to recover from and choose the “Explore” option.
N2WS will launch a worker node and mount the volume up to the worker and it will present the volume contents as a web page that you can restore individual files.
Volume Recovery
There are recovery scenarios where we may wish to recover an entire volume like a data volume so that we can recover that volume back to the original instance or use it on a completely different instance.
In this scenario, we are going to recover the backup volume and attach that volume to a different SQL server so that we can perform some offline database manipulation.
Once the volume recovery is complete, we can attach it to a running instance
Instance Recovery
When all else fails, there certainly can be an occasion where you need to restore an entire instance. Things happen and while recovery isn’t necessarily guaranteed 100% success, N2WS gives you a fighting chance and sometimes that’s all you need!
Wait for recovery to finish…
There we go….our instance is back on-line.
No matter which scenario you may run into, just be sure that you are covered. Be safe out there, the cloud can be a scary place.
Cloud On!
The cloud is an architect’s dream. Prior to the cloud if I screwed something up there was tangible evidence that had to be destroyed. Now it’s just a blip in the bill. – Mike Spence