With traditional recovery methods of large files (e.g. databases) from a backup server, you need to wait for all data to be restored completely before you can access a file. InstantData's innovative technology allows you to access your backed-up files almost immediately. Even if you have many large files, you can restore several of them simultaneously. Just drag and drop a set of files to their desired location and InstantData will do the rest. Please note that we strongly recommend testing all disaster recovery measures before implementing them.
Key benefits of InstantData:
- Rapid recovery time (low RTO)
- Recover to local disk or access files without requiring disk space
- Recover full servers into a bootable state
To activate InstantData, see Article 925.
Recovery options
You can use InstantData from an ESE Agent, or from the Storage Platform Console. There are several ways you can recover using InstantData, although only the first two are accessible from the Agent.
1. To gain temporary access to your files
Access your backups on a virtual drive created temporarily for this purpose. You can simply use Windows Explorer to browse to the file you need and double-click to open it.
2. To recover your files permanently
Drag and drop the required files from the InstantData backup browser to Windows Explorer and start using them immediately. InstantData will restore the file sections that you are using first, while doing the rest in the background.
3. To recover an entire system to VMware or Hyper-V
Recover an entire machine into a bootable virtual disk for use in a virtual machine.
4. To do a Bare Metal Recovery
Restore a full, bootable system directly to new physical hardware.
5. To recover directly to Azure
Recover your data by letting InstantData automatically create a virtual machine for you in Azure and do a bare metal recovery (BMR) to that machine.
InstantData tips for Administrators
- The InstantData app will handle connection breaks by automatically attempting to reconnect to the relevant StorageServer. Notifications appear in the system tray.
- InstantData will provide data compatibility feedback when accessing data that is not accessible through the app. Notifications appear in the system tray.
- All logs are kept under %AppData%\Roaming\Redstor Backup Pro\InstantData\logs
- Administrators can also use the command-line interface to automate certain tasks during disaster recovery. See InstantData: Command-line parameters for details.
Limitations of InstantData
Please note:
- The InstantData button is only enabled in the Console for Enterprise Server Edition (ESE) Accounts, and not for legacy SE and DL Accounts.
- Only Group Administrators (or higher) can open the InstantData app in the Console.
- A Windows limitation used to exist whereby the security and ownership settings of files in paths of longer than 260 characters could not be restored. This was addressed by Microsoft in 2016 and by Redstor with the release of Archiving in v18.3, and is therefore no longer an issue.
Comments
2 comments
There used to be a path limitation with InstantData where it failed to restore files which were in longer file paths, i.e. over 256 characters. Has this now been resolved?
Hi Bruce, I have consulted with our developers, and InstantData can now restore files with location paths of more than 256 characters. However, it is not possible to restore into a long file path (i.e. if the destination folder location is a long file path) using InstantData Permanent. I hope that answers your question.
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