How to restore individual items by using Granular Recovery Technology

You can use Granular Recovery Technology (GRT) to restore certain individual items from backup sets. For example, you can use the Agent for Microsoft Exchange Server to restore an email message from a backup without having to restore the entire mailbox. Or, you can use the Agent for Microsoft SharePoint to restore a list without restoring the entire site.

To restore individual items, the Granular Recovery Technology feature must be enabled when you create a backup job.

GRT is enabled by default for backups for the following agents:

  • Active Directory Recovery Agent

  • Agent for Microsoft Exchange Server

  • Agent for Microsoft Hyper-V

  • Agent for Microsoft SharePoint

  • Agent for VMware Virtual Infrastructure

You can restore either full backup sets or individual items from GRT-enabled backups.

By default, the Agent for Microsoft Hyper-V and the Agent for VMware Virtual Infrastructure use Granular Recovery Technology to protect files and folders at a granular level. You can also enable the granular recovery of Microsoft Exchange, SQL, and Active Directory application data that resides on virtual machines.

The following table lists the individual items you can restore for each agent.

Table: Individual items that can be recovered for each agent

Agent

Individual items

Active Directory Recovery Agent

You can restore the following individual items:

  • Active Directory objects and attributes

  • Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM) and Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS) objects and attributes

Agent for Microsoft Exchange Server

You can restore the following individual items:

  • Mailboxes

  • Mail messages and their attachments

  • Public folders

Agent for Microsoft Hyper-V

You can restore drives, folders, and files from virtual machines that run a Windows operating system.

You can also enable the granular recovery of Microsoft Exchange, SQL, and Active Directory application data that resides on virtual machines:

See How Backup Exec protects Microsoft Exchange, SQL, and Active Directory data on virtual machines.

Agent for Microsoft SharePoint

You can restore the following individual items:

  • Portal sites and their associated databases

  • Windows SharePoint Services sites and their associated databases

  • Document library stores (Web Storage System-based)

  • Individual documents that are contained in Document or Picture libraries (Web Storage System-based or Microsoft SQL Server-based)

  • Lists, sites, and sub-sites

Agent for VMware Virtual Infrastructure

You can restore drives, folders, and files from virtual machines that run a Windows operating system.

You can also enable the granular recovery of Microsoft Exchange, SQL, and Active Directory application data that resides on virtual machines:

See How Backup Exec protects Exchange, SQL, and Active Directory data on virtual machines.

When you run a GRT-enabled backup job, Backup Exec creates media with an IMG prefix (for example, IMG00001). IMG media is a specific media type that Backup Exec creates only for GRT-enabled backup operations. When you run a GRT-enabled backup job, the IMG media stores the backup data.

Note:

Backup-to-disk folders do not support encryption for GRT-enabled jobs.

You should consider which device you use for GRT-enabled backups before you begin. You should also consider any special requirements for the type of data you back up.

More Information

Recommended devices for backups that use Granular Recovery Technology

About requirements for jobs that use Granular Recovery Technology

Recommendations for using backup-to-disk folders with backup jobs that use Granular Recovery Technology

How to reclaim disk space for backup jobs that use Granular Recovery Technology

How to restore individual items by using Granular Recovery Technology