Today I am pleased to announce a new capability available in HC3 version 8.1 software: a way to rapidly access data from snapshots (for uses like file-level recovery and more) by cloning a virtual disk from a VM snapshot while that VM is live.
This new file-level recovery capability is a great addition to the many backup and disaster recovery features already natively available on HC3, including flexible snapshot scheduling and retention management, replication, failover, failback, full VM recovery, and cloud-based disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS). While HC3 users can choose a third-party backup and disaster recovery solutions to use with HC3, many choose the simplicity and efficiency of the built-in features over purchasing additional solutions.
So, what’s new? HC3 has always been able to quickly recover entire VMs to previous snapshots - this new feature enables an administrator to very quickly gain access to specific virtual disk point-in-time snapshots to recover files or any other data that was accidentally deleted, corrupted, or otherwise lost. A while back, I blogged about file-level recovery using a recovery ISO. Many of you may be familiar with that process but I am excited to tell you how much easier recovery is with this new capability.
Here are the steps to recover an individual file (or even an entire volume or database, etc.):
- The administrator simply selects a point-in-time snapshot
- A new snapshot dropdown will display the virtual disks (including their current drive letter or mount points) from the VM in the snapshot
- With one click, a virtual disk can be cloned from a snapshot and mounted to a live VM.
- The default VM where the cloned disk is mounted is the original VM for that snapshot, but any other VM on the HC3 system can be optionally selected
- The mounted disk can then be fully accessed (read/write) to recover any data on that drive to be copied to its original location or wherever desired. In some cases, you may simply want to use the cloned virtual drive to replace the original corrupted data disk to avoid the time required to copy large files back to the original virtual
It probably took you longer to read this than it would to actually use this new ability. You can better experience how easy it is to use in this short demo video.
You can find even more detailed information on these features in the HyperCore v8.1 User Guide.
You may recognize other use cases made possible by this new capability. A clone of a production SQL server database disk could be mounted into a different SQL server VM to support a data warehouse import, offline consistency check, backup or to prepare for OS or SQL server version upgrade. Same for file server or other application upgrades.
For more ideas on how to leverage this or other HC3 features or to share your own ideas or ask questions, please visit the Scale Legion online user community at https://scalelegion.community. We look forward to you using these new features and if you have any feedback regarding these features, please feel free to contact our product team at pm@scalecomputing.com.