Granular Recovery Of Files & Folders - iSCSI Restore

Xopero ONE includes a granular recovery feature, which allows users to restore individual files and folders from VMware Virtual Machine backup. It makes a restore process much easier and quicker in many unexpected situations. This article describes one of VMware restore possibilities - iSCSI target.

Restore view

To get into the restore view open the VMware tab and click Manage&Restore button next to the VMware environment whose copy of the virtual machine you want to recover.

Use Restore button next to the machine that data you want to restore.

After doing so the system will display another aside, where you have to select the Backup plan (which in this scenario should be an VMware backup) and the Backup copy - the exact version in time.

To proceed click the Restore button, which will display 3 possibilities to restore the data from a VMware backup. Select the iSCSI target option to continue.

iSCSI target

After selecting the iSCSI target as the restore method, Select data to restore view will appear.

The application will display all the disks included in your virtual machine backup in this part. Decide, which drives should be included in your iSCSI target by using the Restore all button or marking the checkboxes to Restore selected parts.

The last step is the Restore data form, it consists of 3 sections: Data to restore (which was already set on the previous view), iSCSI worker, and iSCSI settings.

iSCSI worker section is dedicated to a device that will be a host of this iSCSI target (it will be sharing it), you can select one of the devices added to the system, that supports iSCSI targets creation. iSCSI settings allow you to select the Network adapter that the target will be shared through, and also the Port, which by default is 3260(dedicated for iSCSI targets).

Click the Run iSCSI button in order to start the process. If everything has been set properly, then a new entry should appear in a Task tab - it will last as long as you don't stop it.

iSCSI initiator

Since the iSCSI target is already running and all you need to, is to access it. To do so, you can use an iSCSI initiator(on Windows). Press R while holding the Windows Key to open the Run menu and then enter iscsicpl to open the iSCSI initiator Properties. Use the Quick Connect option to find your iSCSI target - enter your iSCSI worker address into the Target field.

Click Quick Connect.. button to proceed. The system should display the report about discovered targets within this address and it will also inform you about the connection status - if it succeeded or not.

Click Done button to close the report. The target should now be visible on your Discovered targets list with Connected status.

Disk Management

At that point, the target is already connected to your device. Now, open Disk Management - press R Key, while holding Windows Key and type diskmgmt. msc, then press Enter key and look for a disk with an Offline state.

Click the Right mouse button on the offline disk and select the Online option to bring the disk to the online state.

As soon as the disk gets Online status, you will be also able to see what disk letter has been assigned to your partitions. Now, open your Explorer to get access to your files!