This article refers to CloudBerry Backup 4.2 and later.

CloudBerry Backup allows you to easily restore your system from an image-based backup. You can perform restores directly from the cloud or USB flash drive to any dissimilar hardware or Hyper-V, VMware virtual machine.

Below is the instruction on how to restore your system from an image based backup.

Restoring Image Based Backup

1. Start the Restore Wizard by clicking Restore button on the CloudBerry Backup toolbar and follow the Wizard steps.2. When Restore Wizard prompts you to select the type of data for restore, just go ahead and choose Restore Image Based Backup option and hit Next.3. Choose, whether to restore your image based backup as a physical disk or as a virtual disk.4. Select the volumes you would like to restore.5. Select the particular physical disk you would like to restore your image based backup to.Complete the rest of the Restore Wizard steps to enable the encryption and compression options, and finally run the system recovery job.

Restoring Image Based Backup on Another Computer

In some cases, you may need to perform the restore of your system on another computer. CloudBerry Backup provides such possibility. To restore your image based backup on another computer just follow the instruction below prior to running the Restore Wizard:

1. Download and install another copy of CloudBerry Backup on a new computer. You can take advantage of 15 day trial.

2. Register exactly the same cloud storage account that used before.

3. Select the same storage bucket as before.

4. Click on the Advanced settings link to specify the backup prefix.5. From the "Backup prefix" drop-down menu, select the same prefix that you used in you previous computer so CloudBerry Backup can find the data in the specified storage bucket.6. The next step is to synchronize the repository in order to retrieve the metadata of all the files associated with the backed up system.

Note: Repository sync will start automatically for all cloud storages except cold storages like Amazon Glacier. Once sync completed, you will be able to see your backups on the Backup Storage tab. If it is not there by some reason, run the repository sync manually:

To synchronize the repository, select Options from the drop-down menu located in the top-right corner of the screen.7. In the Options dialog, navigate on Repository tab and click Synchronize Repository button.8. In the Synchronize Repository dialog, select the desired storage account from the Account drop-down list and click Synchronize Now button.After all the steps required for repository synchronization are done, just go ahead and run the CloudBerry Restore Wizard to recover your system from an image based backup.

Please, review the related posts:

Image Based Backup Feature in CloudBerry Backup 4.2
How to Create a Bootable USB Drive with CloudBerry Backup

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This article refers to CloudBerry Backup 4.2 and later.

We are excited to announce a release of CloudBerry Backup 4.2. This version comes with a completely redesigned interface and a set of new outstanding features and enhancements including image based backup feature that significantly extends functionality of existing "Bare metal / System state" backup.

Below is the list of what's been added in this release

Let's have a closer look at these features!

Image Based Backup Feature

This feature allows you to take a snapshot of entire operating system with all the data associated with it including the system state and all the application configurations and save it as a single file called image. Currently, the Image Based Backup is the most reliable way to backup everything on a system.

For more information, please review the following blog: The Image Based Backup Feature in CloudBerry Backup 4.2

Make Bootable USB drive

You can use CloudBerry Backup to create a bootable USB drive so it will further serve as a boot device to start your operating system or recover it in case of system crash.

For more information, please review the following blog: How to Create a Bootable USB Drive with CloudBerry Backup

Microsoft Azure File Storage

Using the renewed version of CloudBerry Backup, you can now easily create a new Microsoft Azure File storage account, add new file shares and effectively manage your data in the shares.

For more information, please review the following blog: CloudBerry Backup 4.2 supports Microsoft Azure File Storage

Microsoft OneDrive Storage

The renewed version of CloudBerry Backup supports Microsoft OneDrive storage. You can select OneDrive in a list of available cloud storage providers.For more information, please review the following blog: How to Use Microsoft OneDrive with CloudBerry Backup

Oracle Cloud Storage

The renewed version of CloudBerry Backup supports Oracle Cloud storage as well. You can select OracleCloud icon in a list of available cloud storage providers.

Keystone Authentication v3

You can now specify keystone authentication v3 in the Keystone version drop-down list when adding a new OpenStack-compatible storage account.

Ability to Skip Locked Files

CloudBerry backup 4.2 allows you to skip locked files being used by other applications when you run a backup plan. This option is available in "Advanced Filter" step of Backup Wizard.

Note: This option is available only if "Use block level backup" and "Force using VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Service)" options are not selected in the Advanced options step of the Backup Wizard. If at least one of those two options is selected, then the "Do not backup locked files" option will be grayed out.

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This article refers to CloudBerry Backup 4.2 and later.

The newer version of CloudBerry Backup allows you to restore your system from an existing image based backup to Hyper-V or VMware virtual machines.

Performing P2V restore

1. Start the Restore Wizard by clicking Restore button on the CloudBerry Backup toolbar and follow the Wizard steps.2. When Restore Wizard prompts you to select the type of data for restore, just go ahead and choose Restore Image Based Backup option then hit Next.3. Select Restore as virtual disk option and choose the desired virtual file format from the corresponding drop-down list.4. Select the partitions you would like to restore.5. Specify some local folder to restore the selected partitions to and specify a name for the virtual disk file.Complete the rest of the Restore Wizard steps to finally create a virtual disk!

6. The next step is to create a virtual machine using Hyper-V Manager or VMware Workstation tools. When creating the new virtual machine, just add a hard drive you have made with CloudBerry Backup to this machine.

Restoring to the different types of virtual machines

If you are going to restore your image based backup to Hyper-V virtual machine, then during the creation of this machine in the Virtual Machine Wizard you should specify Generation-2 option. However, please be advised that it is required only if you made your image based backup in the machine that is running on SCSI controller and use EFI for the system boot. On the machines, that boot through BIOS and run on IDE or SATA controllers, it is better to specify Generation 1 option with IDE controller.

If you are restoring your image based backup on VirtualBox and VMware then it's better the same controller as you had in the source machine.

Please, review the related posts:

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This article refers to CloudBerry Backup 4.3 and later.

We are glad to announce that starting from CloudBerry Backup 4.3, users have the ability to perform image based backups of the entire operating system to FTP/SFTP servers.

How to Make Image Based Backup to FTP/SFTP Server with CloudBerry Backup

1. Launch CloudBerry Backup, click on Bare Metal icon in the upper-left corner and click Add New Account button.

2. Select FTP or SFTP option. In this post, we select SFTP as an example.

3. Specify the required settings in order to establish connection to your SFTP server. Then hit OK to register the SFTP account.

4. Select the new SFTP account from the list of registered accounts and click Next.

Complete the rest of the Backup Wizard steps to create and customize your backup plan!

Conclusion

With CloudBerry Backup, you can easily upload snapshots of entire operating system including all application data to any FTP/SFTP servers and effortlessly restore it back to your computer. You can take advantage of CloudBerry Backup 15-days trial version for free!

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This article refers to CloudBerry Backup 4.3 and later.

In this blog, we provide an instruction on how to recover individual files from the image based backup. It is important to note that CloudBerry Backup will only download the selected files from the cloud , there is no need to download the whole image. Thus CloudBerry Backup significantly reduces restore time and cuts on outgoing transfer costs.

How to Recover Individual Files from Image Based Backup

1. Launch CloudBerry Backup, navigate on Backup Storage > Disk Image.

2. Right-click on the system image file and select File Level Restore option.

3. If you enabled encryption when doing this backup, specify the encryption password in order to decrypt your data.

4. You will see the list of volumes that are included in the system image backup.

5. Expand the volumes and find the individual files you would like to restore from the system backup. Right-click on the files and hit Restore to.

Note: You can restore the entire folder with all the files inside it. Just right-click on that folder and hit Restore to.

6. Choose the location you want to restore the files to and click OK.

7. You will see the following notification message.

8. To review the restore plan, go to Restore Plans tab where you can manage all the restore plans you have created. The green progress bar indicates the current progress of the data restoring.

That's it! Now your restore plan is up and running and you can take advantage of the file level recovery from image based backup with CloudBerry Backup solution!

You can try CloudBerry Backup absolutely for free. Just download 15 day fully functional trial version of CloudBerry Backup and check if our backup solution meets your needs and requirements!

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CloudBerry Explorer for Amazon S3
CloudBerry Desktop Backup for Amazon S3
CloudBerry Backup for Windows Server
CloudBerry MS SQL Backup for Amazon S3
CloudBerry Backup for Exchange Server
CloudBerry Enterprise Backup for Amazon S3

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CloudBerry Backup 4.3 comes with a set of new features and enhancements such as File Level Recovery, Amazon Cloud Drive and VMware vCloud Air support , and best of all Free version for private desktop users!

Here is the list of new features:

Let's have a closer look at these features!

File Level Recovery from Image Based Backup

In the previous versions of CloudBerry Backup, you could only recover an entire operating system from the system image file. In this release, we have added the ability to recover individual files from the image.

For more information, please review the following blog: How to Recover Individual Files from Image Based Backup

Support Amazon Cloud Drive, VMWare vCloud Air and Verizon

The renewed version of CloudBerry Backup supports Amazon Cloud Drive, VMWare vCloud Air and Verizon storage! You can find them in a list of available cloud storage providers.

Please, find step-by-step instructions on how to get started with VMware vCloud Air and Amazon Cloud Drive in the following blogs:

Free Backup for Private Desktop Users

A freeware version of CloudBerry Backup is now available! It comes with most of the features that you can find in the commercial license version of our product such as flexible schedule options and retention policies as well as a whole variety of cloud storage providers. The freeware version is only available for the users of the desktop version of Windows such as Windows XP, Vista, 7 , 8 and 10 and only for personal non-business use.

For more information, please review the following blog: CloudBerry Backup Freeware Version

Support Multipart Upload for S3-like Storage Accounts

The software vendors such as Scality and Cloudian keep improving their platforms to empower data centers to S3-like storage service providers. In this release, we are adding a multipart upload feature that allows for more reliable file transfer by breaking files into chunks. The affected storage accounts are Scality, Cloudian, ThinkOn , Tiscali, SeeWeb, Caringo, DinCloud, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Azure File, Exoscale, Gdocs, Amazon Glacier, Google Cloud, IDCFrontier, NetApp, NiftyCloud, Numergy, OpenStack, QNAP, Amazon S3, Verizon and VMware vCloud Air.

Support FTP, SFTP for Image Based Backup

Starting from CloudBerry Backup 4.3, users have the ability to perform image based backups of an entire operating system including all application data to any FTP/SFTP servers.

For more information, please review the following blog: How to Perform Image Based Backup to FTP/SFTP Server

Yearly Schedule

In the previous versions of CloudBerry Backup, you could only set either daily, weekly, or monthly reoccurring backup schedule. Starting from this release, you can initiate the yearly backup as well.

yearly_backup

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This article refers to CloudBerry Backup 4.3 and later.

In this post, we explain how to create bootable USB for Windows Server 2003 operating system with CloudBerry Backup!

First of all, we strongly recommend you to create a bootable USB device on a computer that runs Windows 7 or higher. The thing is that Windows Server 2003 does not contain necessary network components that are required for recovering system from the cloud.

Follow the instructions below to create a bootable USB with Windows Server 2003:

Step 1. Being on Windows Server 2003: Install CloudBerry Backup, specify your cloud storage account and run Image Based Backup.

Learn more how to run image based backup in the following blog: Image Based Backup Feature in CloudBerry Backup

Step 2. On another computer that runs Windows 7 or higher, install and launch CloudBerry Backup and specify the same cloud storage account as well as the same backup prefix as you did in CloudBerry Backup on the computer with Windows Server 2003 (in Step 1).

Next, plug your USB device into the computer with Windows 7 or higher and make use of the Make Bootable USB option that you can find on the CloudBerry Backup toolbar.

In the dialog box, specify your USB device from the drop-down list, create master password to protect your recovery disk and hit Create Disk button.

Learn more how to create bootable USB in the following blog: How to Create a Bootable USB Drive with CloudBerry Backup

Step 3. To restore Windows Server 2003, plug the bootable USB device into the computer on which you want to run Windows Server 2003 and restart this computer. When you see the "Boot Menu", just go ahead and choose the Bare Metal Recovery option to run CloudBerry Backup.

In the launched CloudBerry Backup, run the Restore Wizard and follow the Restore Wizard steps to initiate the recovery process.

Learn more how to restore operating system using bootable USB drive in the following blog: Recover from Bootable USB Device

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You can try CloudBerry Backup with "Image based backup" and "bootable USB" features absolutely for free! Just download 15-days fully functional trial version of CloudBerry Backup and check if our backup solution meets your needs and requirements.

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CloudBerry Explorer for Amazon S3
CloudBerry Desktop Backup for Amazon S3
CloudBerry Backup for Windows Server
CloudBerry MS SQL Backup for Amazon S3
CloudBerry Backup for Exchange Server
CloudBerry Enterprise Backup for Amazon S3

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We are excited to announce a release of CloudBerry Backup v4.6. The latest version comes with the following new features and updates:

Support dynamic disks for Image-based backup
Ability to create a bootable ISO for Image-based restore
Support JSON for Keystone authentication

Support dynamic disks for Image-based backup

In previous versions of CloudBerry Backup you were not able to include dynamic disks into the image-based backup, only basic disks were backed up. Now you can back up dynamic disks - they will be included by default if you create a new Image-based backup plan. For existing plans there is a need to edit the backup plan and select those disks into backup. Check out How to Create Image-based Backup.

Note: Dynamic disks can be restored only as basic disks. You will need to convert them back to dynamic after the restore. You can use Windows Disk Management on your computer to make the conversion. Check out How to Recover System from Image-based Backup.

Creating a bootable ISO for Image Restore

In previous versions we offered a bootable USB option only that allows you to run a system recovery from the image-based backup. Now you can create a bootable ISO file so you will be able to mount the ISO file as a disk and restore your system. This option can be helpful for environments that do not have USB or for virtual envrionment. Learn more at How to Create a Bootable ISO for Image-based Backup.

Support JSON for Keystone authentication

New versions of OpenStack Keystone API currently tend to support only JSON format for their requests, deprecating the XML format. So now CloudBerry Backup fully supports JSON format that allows you to use cloud storages based on a new Keystone API.

Conclusion

You can try CloudBerry Backup 4.6 with all the new features absolutely for free! Just go ahead and download 15-days fully functional trial version of CloudBerry Backup and check if our backup solution meets your needs and requirements.

Download CloudBerry Backup FREE TRIAL

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This article refers to CloudBerry Backup 4.6 and later.

The latest release of CloudBerry Backup allows you to create a bootable ISO image that you can further use to recover your operating system from image-based backup.

Let's get started!

How to Create Bootable ISO Image with CloudBerry Backup

1. Run CloudBerry Backup and click on Make Bootable USB icon.

2. Select the ISO image radio button and click Browse (...).

3. Choose the Windows ISO image file or create a new one by simply entering the name for it (any name you want) and click Open.

4. You will see the path to your new bootable ISO image. Click on Create Disk button to start the creation of the image.

Note: You may also want to add your own drivers to the bootable ISO image. Just specify the path to the folder that contains the drivers in the Path to drivers field.

5. Once the process completes, click Close button.

That's it! Now your bootable ISO image is created! You can use it to recover your operating system in case of the system crash.

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You can try CloudBerry Backup with the ability to create bootable ISO images absolutely for free! Just go ahead and download our 15-days fully functional trial version of our product and check if it meets your needs and requirements.

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Featured products:

CloudBerry Explorer for Amazon S3
CloudBerry Desktop Backup for Amazon S3
CloudBerry Backup for Windows Server
CloudBerry MS SQL Backup for Amazon S3
CloudBerry Backup for Exchange Server
CloudBerry Enterprise Backup for Amazon S3

Like our products? Please help us spread the word about them. Learn here how to do it.

Shortly before Christmas we are excited to announce a new small release of CloudBerry Backup v4.7.1. It comes with a number of enhacements like:

New storage provider: NetApp object storage
Ability to create and run MS SQL Server restore plan in CLI
Ability to create a bootable flash or ISO in CLI

New Storage Providers

In the newer version we added one more S3 compatible storage provider - NetApp object storage (NetApp StorageGRID Webscale Object Storage). Go to the main menu in CloudBerry Backup, choose Add New Account, find NetApp:

Enter Access and Secret keys that you have generated in NetApp Network Management System. Now you are ready to set up backup to your NetApp object storage!

Command line interface

We enhanced the command line interface with MS SQL Server restore and creating a bootable drive command. Learn more at Command line interface.

Conclusion

You can try CloudBerry Backup 4.7.1 with all the new features absolutely for free! Just go ahead and download 15-days fully functional trial version of CloudBerry Backup and check if our backup solution meets your needs and requirements.

Download CloudBerry Backup FREE TRIAL

Featured products:

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We are pleased to announce a newer version of CloudBerry Backup 4.8 that comes with the following new features: backing up user profiles, support of AWS Snowball, AWS Asia Pacific (Seoul) region and CLI for Image-based backup.

Let's look closer into these features!

Backing up user profiles

Starting from now you can back up certain files or folders across all user profiles on a computer. Previously you had to choose those folders manually per each user. The new option allows to set folder(s) and back up them across all users on the computer within one click. Learn more at Backing Up User Profiles blog.

Supporting AWS Snowball

Along with AWS Import/Export service we added a new service recently announced by AWS - AWS Snowball. AWS offers you their own hardware device called Snowball for transferring data to Amazon S3. Our backup wizard allows you to set up an initial backup to the Snowball and continue backup to Amazon S3. Learn more at Seeding Large Data with AWS Snowball.

Supporting AWS Asia Pacific (Seoul) region

One more region is now available for AWS buckets - Seoul. You can choose the new region in the Create Bucket dialog when setting up Amazon S3 or Glacier account for your backup:

AWS Seoul

CLI for Image-based backup

We enhanced a command-line with image-based backup. Check out Command Line Interface to get more details.

Conclusion

You can try CloudBerry Backup 4.8 with all new features absolutely for free! Just go ahead and download 15-days fully functional trial version of CloudBerry Backup and check if our backup solution meets your needs and requirements.

Download CloudBerry Backup FREE TRIAL

Featured products:

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What is Image-Based and File-Level backup? What is the difference between them? In which cases is it preferred to use the first one and in which — the latter? We are going to answer these and some other questions in this article.

File-Level Backup

File Backup (or file-level backup) is one of the simplest backup options. Only files and folders chosen by the user are backed up according to a preset schedule. As a rule, only changed data are backed up each time and it allows to accelerate the process.

The size of a file-level backup copy on a drive is exactly the same as the size of the data contained. And it is well enough if you want to restore only user information due to, for example, a human fault.

In case of a serious failure, the process will be much more complicated, since lack of system information presupposes installation and setting of the operating system and all applications. Only after that you can restore files and folders and get a fully functional system, that’s why the entire process can take a lot of time. In addition, it may occur that important data are not included into the backup copy if the administrator forgot to include them into the list.

In fact, file-level backup can be used to protect data itself — working files and documents. This option can scarcely be used to store the server state.

Image-Based Backup

Image-based backup allows to store the state of the system at a certain time and the user can roll back to it in case of failure. Files and folders, system configuration, apps and software are stored in a single image, which can be used to deploy the system in case of failure. This technique requires more space on a storage system but ensures safety of all server data and fast restoration. If a few server files are updated, you don’t have to recreate the entire system image — only changed data pieces will be backed up.

Remember that all backups are sent directly to the cloud storage, so you don’t need to reserve space on your local drives.

By the way, system image can be used for file-level restoration, i.e. when a few elements are required but not the entire server. It’s unlikely that you will want to deploy the entire machine again if a user loses one document. Thus Image-based backup eliminates the necessity for file-level backup, but it requires more storage space and time.

Image-based backup also allows to restore data in different ways:

Restore as a virtual machine in the cloud (Amazon EC2)
Restore with USB Flash directly from the cloud
Restore to a dissimilar hardware
Restore to Hyper-V or VMware
Restore individual files from image based backup

Keep in mind that file-level backup and image-based backup support operation with versions. Meaning you can store several versions of files or system images. Versioning allows to get back to the target state because undesirable changes can be revealed some time later. If there are no versions, you will have just one last copy that may not contain required data.

Learn how to perform Image-Based backup with CloudBerry Backup.

Use scenario

The option to be chosen depends on the backup role in your case.

There are times when a 1-day project shutdown results in huge expenses. Then choose image-based backup - it will allow to make the system fully functional in the shortest possible time even in case of a serious failure.
Image-based backup can be restored on another server, in a cloud storage or a remote site. For example, a physical server can be easily turned into a virtual cloud machine in this way.
File-level backup is also enough when you have to backup documents, tables, databases or other working data. The process will be as fast as possible and with no extra load on the server.

Here are a couple of guidelines on system or separate files restoration from an image-backup. In addition, CloudBerry Backup allows to restore the entire image in a cloud (EC2 or Azure).

All these possibilities are available immediately after CloudBerry Backup installation. We offer a free 15-days’ trial period for all editions.

Try Image-Based Backup in CloudBerry Backup

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This post was contributed by Vadim S.

Introduction

If you enjoy using Cloudberry Backup for image-level restoration, then you will appreciate one of its new features - support of Microsoft Azure VM service. But if you are new to Microsoft’s cloud, you can check our step-by-step manual providing information how to sign up to Azure VM Free Trial.

Requirements

When you complete registration, you will get $200 to spend for Azure services during the trial period. However, you can use this amount to create and try any combination of Azure resources. So, you will be able to explore Microsoft cloud for free. You can also review Azure prices for paid subscription.

The following information is required to complete the registration process :

Phone number - to verify your identity.
Credit card - for additional verification of your identity. Microsoft does not withdraw anything from credit cards during the trial period.
Microsoft Account username (formerly Windows Live ID). Most likely you already have one, but in other cases, please, create your account here signup.live.com. When done, continue reading.

If all in place, follow the link and press Start now button.

Registration

When you proceed to sign up on Azure VM, you will see a Sign in screen. Enter your Microsoft Account credentials here.
Next you will have to manage Azure account by providing personal information. Fill out all mandatory fields, enter your mobile phone number in section 2 and select the type of verification (either a voice call or an SMS). Verify your phone number to proceed to section 3.
Next you will have to enter your payment card info for additional identity verification. Fill out all fields, check I Agree… below and click Sign up.
After managing your account and choosing a subscription plan you will get a confirmation message.
Pressing Start managing my service button will forward you to Microsoft Dashboard panel.

You will find Virtual Machines section on the left - feel free to create a new VM or restore your image backup via Cloudberry Backup.

This post was contributed by Vadim S.

This post applies to CloudBerry Backup 4.9 and later.

It became possible to create image-level server backups in Cloudberry Backup long ago and this feature has been regularly updated. However, restore options that are not restricted just by the source server are even more interesting. For instance, you can deploy the image on a third party cloud storage, e.g. Azure VM. Let’s go to the heart of the matter.

Prerequisites and Limitations

First of all you should create, at least, one backup copy of the image (including system required partitions). The process is quite simple but still I would like to provide a link to a step-by-step guide.

Then, you should sign up on Azure VM or remember your login information. You will need it for the restore.

You are limited by 1TB per disk on restore - this is Microsoft Azure limitation for Azure VMs.

Restoring image-based backup to Azure VM

Find Backup Storage tab on the Cloudberry Backup console and choose Disk Image on the left.
On the right you will see the list of available image-level backups. Right-click the required one and choose Restore to Azure VM Instance.
The Restore Wizard will be launched. The option - Restore as Azure Virtual Machine - on will be pre-selected on the Type of Data step. Click Next.
Now you will need to select Azure VM account. Choose Create in the Select Account field. A window will appear where you should enter your Windows Azure login data and click Sign in. Then you will see a dialog of OAuth service already familiar to you, enter your login\password and authorize the access.
After signing in on Azure choose the required Tenant and Subscription in the Azure VM Account window.
Now your existing account is entered in the Select Account section and the wizard offers to choose parameters of your future VM: resource group, size, network, etc.
You can choose any disks to be restored to Azure in the Select Partitions section (but the system disk is required). Check the boxes you need. Click Next.
If you had an encrypted backup, you will be prompt to enter a decryption password. If not, just skip the Encryption Options step.
Then you can schedule the restore process or choose "No schedule" if you want to run it manually later.
The next step is a Notification step where you can choose whether you want to have an email notification for failures only or in any case.

Once your restore completes, you can find your VM running in the Microsoft Azure console:

Conclusion

With CloudBerry Backup 4.9 you can restore your image-level backup directly to Microsoft Azure VM. You can try CloudBerry Backup 4.9 absolutely for free! Just go ahead and download 15-days fully functional trial version of CloudBerry Backup and check if our backup solution meets your needs and requirements.

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Image-level backup with an exclusion list

Remember any situation when you needed to backup a server image with some files excluded. It can be one of these cases:

Server with sql dump volume - you probably don’t want to store this data in the cloud,
A file server with uncritical data, which can be handy for users but is not adequate for business (audio files, photos, etc),
You have a server with a few roles (SQL, data storage, Hypervisor) and don’t want, for example, to make a backup of virtual machine drives.

Of course, it is not a complete list of use cases. Till the last update exclusions during the backup were possible only with the file-level job, which can’t be easily applied to disaster recovery or initial deployment scenarios. With the new 5.1 update it is possible to choose filesystem items to exclude from the image-based backup plan while preserving other great benefits of image-level jobs.

To exclude files or folders, use the Exclude files/folders option on the Advanced Options step of the Image-based backup wizard: Exclude files and folders

Learn more at How to Exclude Files and Folders in Image-based Backup.

Resizing of NTFS partitions during restoration

Previously you might have experienced the benefits of volume-level restoration, and now we provide even more flexibility. Starting with v5.1 it is possible to change the volume size while the restoration process.

In a nutshell, you can:

Shrink the restored volume size on the target machine if, for example, you do restoration on a smaller drive. Of course, the size of used data on the volume in the image backup should be equal to or smaller than the size desired,
Increase the restored volume in case of replacing the drive by a bigger one.

As an additional benefit, there is a new way to restructure the content on HDD - for example, creation of several partitions (System, DATA, etc.).

You can find the restoring option on the Select Partitions step in the Restore Wizard using Reorganize paritions using advanced dialog: Resize partitions

Conclusion

You can try CloudBerry Backup 5.1 with all new features absolutely for free! Just go ahead and download 15-days fully functional trial version of CloudBerry Backup and check if our backup solution meets your needs and requirements.

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With release of updated CloudBerry Backup 5.1 we have introduced its new feature – the ability to resize NTFS partitions during image based restoration. It allows maintaining the desired volume size irrespective the backup. Let's take a closer look at this feature.

When to Use the New Feature

It is common to recover data to the original server, but what to do if you need to use another one or just plan upgrading? By the way, it is necessary to repartition the new drive’s volume according to the new target disk size, and one often does it using OS built-in capabilities. These actions require rolling up your sleeves and doing the following:

Restore an image “as it is” with a smaller volume size.
Boot up the OS and use its tools to extend the partition size.
If the destination drive is smaller (for example, in case of upgrading to SSD), you have to start the shrinking process by means of the operating system, which may bring unpredictable results.

Here the new CloudBerry Backup feature comes. Now it is possible to change the volume size during the restoration process, whether shrink it or extend. Note that the desired size shall be larger than the size used in the image and smaller than the new drive’s available capacity.

Resize while Restoring as a Physical Disk

Here is a quick guide on resizing the volume during the restoration process:

Choose Restore option on the top panel of CloudBerry Backup and click Next.
Choose the desired repository and proceed to the Type of Data screen. The new feature is available only for image data, so choose Restore Image Based Backup.
Select the backup version to restore and the required target: it is possible to use a cloud VM service or a physical server. With two first options you will go to the Select Partitions screen. Otherwise, it will require to specify additional cloud account info.
Click the Target Size content and specify any partition size you need. But keep in mind that this size shall to be larger than the size of restored data and smaller than the available drive capacity.

On the next steps select the partition for the new data and additional settings you want (encryption, notification, etc.). When everything is done, start the Restore Plan.

Resize while Restoring as a Virtual Disk

Start the same Restore Wizard as described above and proceed to Type of Data step.

Select Restore as a virtual disk option and choose file format depending on your virtual platform.
On the next step you can use Target Size column or use a new feature called Advanced Reorganizer by checking the first radio button.
Then Resize partitions screen appear. Here you can create a new partitions structure for the restoring drive – check the screenshot below:
We are going to create a separate blog post about this great feature, so stay tuned!
Select the destination volume, file or virtual machine (depending on your choice). Then set an additional options such as compression, scheduling, notifications, etc.

If you store a backups encrypted, don’t forget to enter the decryption key. After the wizard have finished, you can start the recovery process.

Conclusion

Check the new volume resizing feature in the updated CloudBerry Backup to be well-armed for any disaster or upgrade scenario. If you are not among our customers yet it is easy to check the capabilities of our backup software during a free 15-day trial period. Don’t hesitate to share your thoughts with us using the comments section below or our support forums.

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The New Possibilities

Files and folders exclusion can be useful if you want to reduce a backup size or to recover a server granularly. Here are only few of use cases:

For example, you can have a server folder with virtual machines that are backed up by a separate tool. So, why should you process and store such excess data?
In some cases you may also want to recover a server image without a huge folder with user files. If this data is not necessary right now you can save a lot of time on recovery.
The new server drive can have less capacity and you decide to recover only crucial part of the image.

The new exclusion feature is available only for newly created image backups, so you will probably need to update backups first.

How to Exclude a Data While Backing Up

Open an existing backup plan or create a new one using Image Based button on the Home tab. When the Create Backup wizard appears, proceed to the Select Backup Type step and follow this guide:

Select Image Based Backup option since CloudBerry Backup doesn’t support file exclusion for System State backups.
On the next step choose the drives to backup. Let’s, for example, select Backup All Drives option.
On the next screen check the box Exclude files/folders and enter the desired path in the field. You may also paste a list of files and folders, one per row.
If you can’t remember the exact value, try to edit with advanced dialog and navigate using a folder tree.

Note: If you enter the path that doesn’t actually exist, CloudBerry Backup will simply skip it while backing up. This path will not be removed afterwards since you may want to create this file or folder later.

Please keep in mind that you don’t need to exclude a temporary data such as VSS snapshots and system caches since it is excluded from any backup plan by default.
Set the rest of options such as compression, encryption, etc. and save the backup plan.

How to Exclude a Data While Restoring

CloudBerry Backup also allows to exclude some data from an image during a restore process. Please open generic Restore Wizard using the Restore button on the Home tab and follow these steps:

Proceed to Type of Data wizard screen and select Image Based Backup option.
Select Restore as physical\virtual disk and on the next step click the data size in the Used section. Now you are able to select unnecessary items using the tree view.
If you need to paste a custom exclusion list in “line by line” manner – use Plain View tab.
Set the rest of options such as decryption, notification etc. and run the restore plan.

Note: please keep in mind, that image based restore performs slower if you use exclusion feature, since there are excessive requests to the cloud repository.

Now you know how to exclude a few files during a backup or perform a flexible restore of a server image. If you want to learn more, check out another blog post about the new features of v5.1. You can try CloudBerry Backup 5.1 with all new features absolutely for FREE! Just go ahead, download 15-days fully functional trial version of CloudBerry Backup and check if our backup solution meets your needs.

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Restoring image-based backups as VMware virtual machines

First things first, ensure that you're running CloudBerry Backup Virtual Machine Edition, as any other version is incapable of interacting with VMWare vSphere.

Restoring image-based backups as VMware virtual machines is as easy as any other restoration procedure. Simply launch the Restore Wizard by clicking on the corresponding button on the main toolbar or by utilizing the Ctrl+R shortcut.

Select the storage that contains the image-based backup. CloudBerry Backup will pull it from the cloud and restore it as a vSphere instance.

Next, specify the way data should be restored. Naturally, we'll go with Restore as VMware Machine.

Next, specify the required partition for restoration.

The next step is to specify the server's credentials and the required host.

Specify the required datastore wherein you wish to locate your virtual machine. If the VM you're trying to restore already exists, indicate whether it needs to be shut down before the restoration.

The final step demands you specify the virtual machine parameters like the number of CPUs, RAM, disk space, provisioning, virtual network, and the type of OS being restored.

Conclude configuring the plan and, once done, execute it.

The restoration procedure will start; you will have to wait for quite a while as the volume of files being handled is of considerable size.

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CloudBerry Backup allows you to easily restore your system from an image backup. You can perform restores directly from the cloud or USB flash drive to any dissimilar hardware or Hyper-V, VMware virtual machine or Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud virtual environment.

Below are the instructions on how to restore your system from an image backup.

Restoring System Image Backup Dissimilar Hardware

1. Start the Restore Wizard by clicking Restore button on the CloudBerry Backup toolbar and follow the Wizard steps.2. When Restore Wizard prompts you to select the type of data for restore, just go ahead and choose Restore Image-Based Backup option and hit Next.3. Choose, whether to restore your image backup as a physical disk or as a virtual disk.4. Select the volumes you would like to restore.5. Select the particular physical disk you would like to restore your image to.Complete the rest of the Restore Wizard steps to enable the encryption and compression options, and finally run the system recovery job.

Restoring System Image Backup to Dissimilar Hardware

In some cases, you may need to perform the restore of your system on a different machine. CloudBerry Backup provides such possibility. To restore your image backup on a machine with different hardware just follow the instruction below prior to running the Restore Wizard:

1. Download and install another copy of CloudBerry Backup on a new computer. You can take advantage of 15-day trial.

2. Register exactly the same cloud storage account that used before.

3. Select the same storage bucket as before.

To synchronize the repository, select Options from the drop-down menu located in the top-right corner of the screen.7. In the Options dialog, navigate to Repository tab and click Synchronize Repository button.8. In the Synchronize Repository dialog, select the desired storage account from the Account drop-down list and click Synchronize Now button.After all the steps required for repository synchronization are done, just go ahead and run the CloudBerry Restore Wizard to recover your system from an image backup.

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A simple file backup does a good job of protecting crucial data. However, should your hard drive crash or your operating system become hopelessly corrupt, then you will be left confused, trying to figure out the way out. This is where cloning and image backup come in. Some people assume that these two terms mean the same thing, but that is fundamentally wrong.

Though they both give you a full copy of your data and operating system, you should understand what each technique involves and how it is different from the other, so that you can make an informed choice.

So when do you need what?

Table of Contents

Cloning and Image Backup: The Definition

What is Cloning?

When you clone a drive, its simply copying everything on it (including boot records, files, settings, and themes) to another drive, and get an identical drive. With this technique, there’s no intermediary process, as you just connect both drives and copy the contents of the source drive to the destination drive. This created drive can be used immediately as a primary drive or kept as a replica.

What is Image Backup?

Disk imaging, or image backup, on the other hand, is a process of creating a reflector copy that you can restore later. It involves creating a compressed file with the ISO extension (usually ISO, can be different). The file may be compressed, but is still very large. Unlike cloning, imaging is not straightforward and involves using an intermediary process. Once created, it can be compressed, encrypted, and stored for a long time in a cloud or local storage. When needed, the image can then be opened and installed or restored on the drive. The restoration is typically done by the same image backup software that created it.

The Difference between Cloning and Image Backup

Though cloning and image backup perform almost similar tasks, we have already seen that these two techniques are quite different. Further, they are applied in different situations. Here are the main points that distinguish these two processes.

Core Functions of Cloning

Cloning software allows you to copy everything from one disk to another, file by file in one take, it will also copy the logical structure of the drive in question. And that's pretty much it.

Core Functions of Image Backup

Image backup is still a backup, thus there are techniques, that can make your life easier:

You can compress and encrypt your backup
You can store it in the cloud or local storage to until it's needed
You can run incremental, differential or synthetic backup to store data efficiently
You can restore image backup directly to the virtual machine in the cloud

Disk Cloning Use-Cases

The use cases for cloning are obvious:

Replication of the given drive for maintenance purposes. Your HDD is getting old and it's time to replace it - some errors are commencing from time to time. Or, you got yourself an SSD

With cloning, the created replica can be used to boot from the same system, with the state that the computer was at the time the cloning was undertaken. However, Windows is restricted from booting from a USB drive. To boot from your cloned disk, you will have to attach it to the Motherboard SATA port.

Image Backup Use-Cases

The image backup will help you if:

The given machine or the drive is not working. From time to time something bad happens even to the best of our devices.
You have upgraded hardware and need to migrate to another PC. It works even in long-term if the old drive is not with you anymore, but you still need to recreate the data.
Your drive was hit by ransomware or any other malware and you need to get your data back fast and cheap. In that case, you can skip the ransom, delete the drive entirely and run the last image backup

Advantages and Disadvantages of Cloning

Pros

The cloned disk can be used immediately, and therefore significantly cuts downtime

Cons

A clone needs more space because the partitions are immediately created on the target disk. It’s therefore impossible to compress or encrypt the data
You can’t create a differential or incremental clone
Only one clone can be stored at one time on a drive
You need to have another hard drive to clone your present one

Advantages and Disadvantages of Image Backup

Pros

Easy management as only one file contains the entire backup
If your disk is big enough, numerous backups can be saved on the same disk
The backup file can be compressed and so uses less space
You can deliver hard drive images over the network to one or many systems simultaneously

Cons

To carry out the restoration process, the backup software is required

Conclusion

It is all, really, a matter of use-case. Cloning is rather helpful and fast for performing scheduled maintenance - HDD is getting old and you need to replace it. Image backup is a more complex feature that allows you to prepare for any unexpected issues - ransomware attack, HDD failure, a crash of the whole PC. It is more difficult to get used to imaging software and it really does require a fair bit of planning, but in the modern world, you need to plan and prepare unless you want your crucial data to get lost.

Restoring Image Based Backup

Restoring Image Based Backup on Another Computer

Please, review the related posts:

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Microsoft Azure File Storage

Microsoft OneDrive Storage

Oracle Cloud Storage

Keystone Authentication v3

Ability to Skip Locked Files

Performing P2V restore

Restoring to the different types of virtual machines

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How to Make Image Based Backup to FTP/SFTP Server with CloudBerry Backup

Conclusion

How to Recover Individual Files from Image Based Backup

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File Level Recovery from Image Based Backup

Support Amazon Cloud Drive, VMWare vCloud Air and Verizon

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Support Multipart Upload for S3-like Storage Accounts

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Conclusion

How to Create Bootable ISO Image with CloudBerry Backup

+++++

New Storage Providers

Command line interface

Conclusion

Conclusion

File-Level Backup

Image-Based Backup

Use scenario

Introduction

Requirements

Registration

Prerequisites and Limitations

Restoring image-based backup to Azure VM

Conclusion

Related links:

Related posts:

Image-level backup with an exclusion list

Resizing of NTFS partitions during restoration

Conclusion

When to Use the New Feature

Resize while Restoring as a Physical Disk

Resize while Restoring as a Virtual Disk

Conclusion

Related links:

The New Possibilities

How to Exclude a Data While Backing Up

How to Exclude a Data While Restoring

Related links:

Restoring image-based backups as VMware virtual machines

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Restoring System Image Backup Dissimilar Hardware

Restoring System Image Backup to Dissimilar Hardware

Featured Product

Related Links:

Cloning and Image Backup: The Definition

What is Cloning?

What is Image Backup?

The Difference between Cloning and Image Backup

Core Functions of Cloning

Core Functions of Image Backup

Disk Cloning Use-Cases

Image Backup Use-Cases

Advantages and Disadvantages of Cloning

Advantages and Disadvantages of Image Backup

Conclusion