At a high-level, posts 1-3 covered the process to deploy, initialize, and configure CPM to backup EC2 instances. To close out the series, I’ll cover the process to restore files using CPM’s backup monitor. Though I’ll close the basic backup/restore series out with this post, there is still much more than can and will be covered such as setting up DR options, performing a DR instance recovery, backing up the CPM data itself, as well as upgrading/recovering CPM. I’ll cover these topics on future posts but believe they extend beyond this basic series as my intention here is simply to introduce you to CPM as a means to backup your AWS EC2 instances.
Recovering Files with CPM
In regards to recovering data, CPM has the ability to recover instances in their entirety, specific volumes, or individual files. The process to restore individual files (similar to a redirected restore for other backup applications) is detailed below.
- Within CPM, click Backup Monitor | Recover
- On the Recovery Panel page, click Explore under the Recover heading to the right of the instance your wanting to restore from.
- An explorer type window is launched that enables you to browse the contents of the instances volumes. Select the file you wish to restore and click the download button.
- When prompted to download the file, click OK and then save it to the directory of your choice.
- Click Close to close the restoration browser to complete the process.
That’s it! Again, there’s much more to CPM than I’ve shown in this simple introductory series but I wanted to post it regardless so that you’ll know there’s a product out there that can backup not only your EC2 instances but also any RDS, Redshift, or Aurora resources you have deployed.
Previous series posts:
Part 1 – Backup AWS Resources N2WS Cloud Protection Manager (CPM)
Part 2 – AWS Backup with CPM – Initializing the Appliance
Part 3 – AWS Backup with CPM – Creating a Backup Schedule and Policy
Hello,
Is the WindowsInstance that you tested in the same subnet as your CPM instance? For some reason if CPM is in a public subnet and if you want to backup an instance from a private subnet ( with NAT Gateway) , backup finishes successful but it’s not working when you try to recover files using the explorer function. Error is not very clear: failure new volume in unexpected state:exception. Have you seen something like this until now?
Hello Slayer, in my case, the CPM instance is installed on a private subnet and I am backing up other private instances. I’ve personally not tried your scenario but will see what I can find out….thanks for your comment.
Thanks as well. I plan to try it for a RAID 0 volume. But i will also try with adding the CPM instance in a private subnet to see if that would fix the problem. Also need to check why the snapshots are not deleted after the retention period has passed even though the backups were successful.
Hey Slayer, I didn’t realize it would take this long, but I finally got another CPM instance deployed into a public subnet. I then backed up instances in a private subnet and was able to restore files without issue. Do you have any network ACLs or security groups between your public CPM instance and the private instance? In my test case, I allowed all from my CPM instance to my private instance. Second, I did create and add a “Backup” role to my CPM instance using the policies statements you can find here: https://18.189.186.199/2018/02/07/part-1-backup-aws-resources-n2ws-cloud-protection-manager-cpm/
If you don’t mind, let me know how your testing goes.