Instant File Recovery from Azure Linux VM backup using Azure Backup – Preview

We earlier announced Instant file recovery from Azure Windows VM backups which enables you to restore files instantly from the Azure Recovery Services Vault with no additional cost or infrastructure. Today, we are excited to announce the same feature for Azure Linux VM backups in preview. If you are new to Azure Backup, you can start backing directly from the Azure IaaS VM blade and start using this feature.

Value proposition:

• Instant recovery of files – Now instantly recover files from the cloud backups of Azure VMs. Whether it’s accidental file deletion or simply validating the backup, instant restore drastically reduces the time to recover your data.
• Mount application files without restoring them – Our iSCSI-based approach allows you to open/mount application files directly from cloud recovery points to application instances, without having to restore them. For e.g. In case of backup of a Azure Linux VM running mongoDB, you can mount BSON data dumps from the cloud recovery point and quickly validate the backup or retrieve individual items such as tables without having to download the entire data dump.

Learn how to instantly recover files from Azure Linux VM backups:

Basic requirements

The downloaded recovery script can be run on a machine which meets the following requirements.

• OS of the machine where the script is run (recovery machine) should support/recognize the underlying file-system of the files present in the backed-up Linux VM.
• Ensure that the OS of the recovery machine is compatible with the backed up VM and the versions are as mentioned in the following table
  

  Linux OS	Versions
  Ubuntu	12.04 and above
  CentOS	6.5 and above
  RHEL	6.7 and above
  Debian	7 and above
  Oracle Linux	6.4 and above

• The script requires python and bash components to execute and provide a secure connection to the recovery point.
  

  Component	Version
  Python	2.6.6 and above
  Bash	4 and above

• Only users with root level access can view the paths mounted by the script.

Advanced configurations

Recovering files from LVM/Software RAID Arrays:

In case you are using LVM/RAID Arrays in the backed-up Linux VM,  you cannot run the script on the same virtual machine due to disk conflicts. Run the script on any other Recovery machine (meeting the basic requirements as mentioned above) and the script will attach the relevant disks as shown in the output below.

The following additional commands need to be run by the user to make LVM/RAID Array partitions visible and online.

For LVM Partitions:

$ pvs   –  This will list all the volume groups under this physical volume

$ lvdisplay   –  This will list all logical volumes, names and their paths in a volume group

$ mount –  Now mount the logical volumes to a path of your choice.

For RAID Arrays:

$ mdadm –detail –scan – This will display details about all RAID Disks in this machine. The relevant RAID disk from the backed-up VM will be displayed with its name ()

If the RAID Disk has physical volumes, mount the disk directly to view all the volumes within it.

$ mount [RAID Disk Path] [/mounthpath]

If the RAID disk was used to configure LVM over and above it, then re-use the process defined for LVM above and supply the volume name as an input.

Related links and additional content

• Want more details about this feature? Check out Azure Backup Linux Restore documentation
• Need help? Reach out to Azure Backup forum for support
• Tell us how we can improve Azure Backup by contributing new ideas and voting up existing ones.
• Follow us on Twitter @AzureBackup for the latest news and updates
• New to Azure Backup, sign up for a free Azure trial subscription