File-Level Restore

Enterprise

Bacula Enterprise Only

This solution is only available for Bacula Enterprise. For subscription inquiries, please reach out to sales@baculasystems.com.

It is possible to perform file listing and extraction functions over the virtual disk images that are restored on the Bacula client’s file system (as opposite to restore directly to the RHV manager) by utilizing the set of tools developed and maintained as a part of a libguestfs project (http://libguestfs.org).

Prerequisites are to have libguestfs tools installed on the host that the virtual disk image file is going to be restored on and to have the appropriate daemon started.

Example of commands that should be run in order to meet these prerequisites are, in the case of RHEL7 host:

yum install libguestfs-tools

systemctl start libvirtd

In order to be able to list the contents of the virtual disk image, the disk image itself needs to be restored on the filesystem of the local host and command virt-ls executed.

Example of the command usage (where the virtual disk has been restored to the file /tmp/bacula-restore/vm1-cos7/Disk1-249226e-c38c-44f0-a121.img in order to list the contents of the / directory):

# virt-ls -R -a /tmp/bacula-restore/vm1-cos7/Disk1-249226e-c38c-44f0-a121.img /

In order to be able to extract the contents of the virtual disk image, the disk image itself needs to be restored on the filesystem of the local host and command virt-copy-out executed.

Example of the command usage (where the virtual disk has been restored to the file /tmp/bacula-restore/vm1-cos7/Disk1-249226e-c38c-44f0-a121.img in order to extract the contents of the /home/ directory to the /tmp directory):

# virt-copy-out -a /tmp/bacula-restore/vm1-cos7/Disk1-249226e-c38c-44f0-a121.img \
 /home/ /tmp

Extra notes

  • In RHV, inactive disks are ignored when a clone is made from a snapshot.

  • In a snapshot backup, if there is a inactive disks without any snapshots, the content of this won’t be backed. But the disk will be created, without content, in the restore.

  • The templates always use the disk format “thick-provisioned”, although the format disks of base vm was “thin-provisioned”. Can not modify templates’ disks.

  • The disks out of the template behave like disks of independent vms.

  • The backup of virtual machines derived from independent templates behaves like independent virtual machines.

  • The backup of vms derivated of dependent templates, only the snapshots of the machine will be backed up, without those of the template.

  • The networks of the templates can be modified(name, connected, etc..) after the template was created. So if the network name is changed in restores from previous backups to this change as result will be more networks, as many networks as have been modified.

See also

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