Disk Image Walkthrough

Overview

This guide details using the Disk Image backup feature within Zmanda Pro. Disk Image allows you to create a complete backup of your system's disks and partitions, enabling full system restoration in case of data loss.

Backup using Disk Image

Using the Disk Image backup type, create a Protected Item.

• To initiate a Disk Image backup, create a Protected Item within Zmanda Pro.

• Note: Using Disk Image incurs additional charges and requires a compatible operating system (Windows 7 or later, Windows Server 2008 R2 or later).

Select partitions for backup

• Choose the specific partitions or drives to include in the backup. It's possible to select individual partitions or select all drives.

• Note: Changes to the partition structure of a drive will be recognized differently in Zmanda Pro. If a selected drive undergoes partition structure changes, Zmanda Pro will prompt for reselection.

Include unused disk sectors for forensic data recovery: Optionally, include unused disk sectors in the backup to facilitate forensic data recovery. Enabling this option extends the backup time but allows for the recovery of non-indexed and marked-as-deleted files in the free space.

You may then configure the rest of the protected item fields as desired. See here for more details.

Restore Disk Image protected items

Restore options

Zmanda Pro offers various restore options:

• Physical Device Restoration: Restore backed-up disks/partitions directly onto physical disks/partitions without requiring temporary storage space.

• Virtual Disk File Restoration: Restore backups as virtual disk files (.vmdk format). Individual files can be extracted from these restored files.

• Granular Restore: Recovery of individual files and folders

• USB Recovery Media: For bare metal recovery

• Restore to Azure or AWS: Migrate/recover devices to AWS or Azure cloud using a manual process

• VMware virtual disk: Recover images as VMware-compatible virtual disks

Restore to a physical device(s)

• The target disk or partition must be unmounted (not in use) for restoration onto physical hardware. Zmanda Pro might automatically unmount it within the booted OS if no programs are accessing it (applicable to non-boot drives).

• To restore the boot drive, reboot your PC into a recovery environment first.

• When restoring to a larger partition, Zmanda Pro automatically expands the file system to fill the target partition. However, restoring a larger backup to a smaller partition is unsupported; the partition must be reduced in size using the OS's partition manager beforehand.

Restoring from the Windows Boot Environment

1. Select the disk or partition to restore from the left-hand pane.

2. Choose the target disk or partition for writing data in the right-hand pane.

3. Click "Add to restore queue."

4. Repeat steps 1-3 for other disks and partitions as needed.

5. Initiate the restore job by clicking "Restore."

Utilize the "Edit" function to repartition local drives using Windows Disk Management. The "Refresh" function renews the view of local disks and partitions available for restore after editing.

Restoring from the Linux Boot Environment

Here's how to restore an entire disk without using temporary storage:

1. Restore only the "disk.vmdk" file (excluding data extents). Open it in a text editor to determine partition sizes.

2. Recreate partitions with the exact target sizes.

3. Restore individual partitions without requiring a local spool disk using the "Program Output" option. Select the specific partition file for restoration (e.g., "dd of=/dev/sdx1 bs=8M").

Alternative ways to recover from a Linux boot environment.

Restore as virtual disk files

Restored Disk Image files are stored in the .vmdk format. These files include:

• A single plain text file (labeled "disk.vmdk" by default) containing metadata about the entire drive.

• For the disk extent of each partition, create separate raw image files.

Even if only a portion of the partitions were selected for backup, the restored disk image will appear to have the full disk size due to zero extents representing unselected partitions within the .vmdk descriptor file. These zero extents are compressed within the storage vault.

Restored .vmdk disk images can be used for various purposes:

• Extracting individual files.
• Recovering data onto a local virtual machine.
• Recovering data onto a cloud server.

Granular restore​

Zmanda Pro supports granular restore to recover individual files and folders from within a virtual disk image.

The available granular restore capabilities do not depend on the Zmanda Pro client device's operating system. For example, restoring files from an NTFS image is possible on a macOS device, and restoring files from an EXT4 image is possible on a Windows device.

For the following Protected Item types, Granular restore is available as an option during the Restore wizard process:

Protected Item type	Supported	Notes
Disk Image	✔ Yes
Hyper-V	✔ Yes	vhdx files only, not vhd nor any avhdx differencing disk
VMware vSphere	✔ Yes
Windows Server System State	❌ No	This Protected Item type produces a vhdx file, but Zmanda Pro does not offer granular restore.
Files and Folders	❌ No	This Protected Item type may include backed-up vhdx files, but Zmanda Pro does not offer granular restore.

The granular restore feature requires that the virtual disk uses a compatible partitioning scheme:

Disk partition structure	Supported	Notes
GPT	✔ Yes
MBR	✔ Yes	Including EBR partitions
Windows Dynamic Disks	⚠️ Partial	See Note 1
Windows Storage Spaces	⚠️ Partial	See Note 1
Linux LVM2	⚠️ Partial	See Note 1
Linux MD	⚠️ Partial	See Note 1

Note 1: The underlying physical format is not supported for granular restore. However in a Disk Image backup, you may have the option to back up either the underlying physical format or the resulting virtual volume. If you back up the resulting volume, it may be supported for granular restore.

The granular restore feature requires that the partition uses a compatible filesystem type:

Filesystem	Supported	Notes
NTFS	Yes	Advanced metadata and reparse points may not be available. Filesystems using Windows Server Data Deduplication may present files as reparse points.
FAT	Yes	Filesystem recognition depends on the original format utility used
EXT4	Yes	Symlinks are not supported
XFS	Yes
ReFS	No
exFAT	No

VMware virtual disk

Zmanda Pro now supports restoring Disk Image backups directly as VMware-compatible virtual disks (.vmdk format). These restored disks can be imported and used in VMware environments without conversion. To ensure full compatibility, back up all disks and partitions associated with the system you intend to restore as a virtual machine. This guarantees the restored virtual machine will have the same disk structure as the original system.

Create USB Recovery Media

The Zmanda Pro desktop application enables the creation of bootable USB recovery media, allowing you to boot your PC from the USB device, log in with your Zmanda Pro credentials, and perform a full system restore from your backups to the connected PC's drives. This feature supports bare-metal restorations.

Follow these steps:

1. Launch the Zmanda Pro desktop app.

2. Navigate to Settings and access the USB Recovery Media wizard.

3. Select preferred options such as WinRE, WinRE ISO, or Windows To Go based on recovery needs.

   • WinRE: Creates minimal recovery media based on the Windows Recovery Environment.
   • WinRE ISO: Creates a minimal bootable ISO file based on the Windows Recovery Environment.

   • Windows To Go: Creates a full Windows boot environment on the USB drive.

Other Boot Environments

While Zmanda Pro offers dedicated creation tools for Windows Recovery Environments, alternative methods exist for creating bootable recovery media:

• Creating a Linux bootable USB drive.

• Utilizing third-party tools like Rufus (Rufus - The Official Website (Download, New Releases) ) to create a Windows To Go drive.
• Employing recovery media provided by your PC manufacturer (e.g., Lenovo, Dell, HP).

In these instances, you'll need to launch Zmanda Pro application manually after booting into the chosen recovery environment.

Amazon Web Service AWS

Creating a Virtual Machine in the AWS cloud from Zmanda Pro Disk Image Backup

This section outlines the steps for creating a virtual machine in the Amazon Web Service (AWS) cloud platform using Zmanda Pro Disk Image backup.

Prerequisites:

• An AWS account with API access keys

• Access to EC2 and S3 using your API access keys

• A properly configured AWS EC2 environment

• Refer to the AWS generic guide for detailed prerequisites: Importing a VM as an image using VM Import/Export - VM Import/Export

Steps:

1. Perform a restore in Zmanda Pro to generate the .vmdk files.

Note: The restored files will be the same size as the original disk. Ensure sufficient storage space exists in your chosen restore location.

1. Concatenate the restored files (excluding the 1 KB descriptor file) to create a single .vmdk file representing the entire disk.

2. Upload the .vmdk file to your designated AWS folder using the AWS S3 command-line tool.

3. Create a local file.json file containing the import configuration details.

4. Execute the AWS import-image command with the file.json file as a parameter to initiate the image import process.

5. Note the ImportTaskId returned by the command.

6. Use the describe-import-image-tasks command to monitor the import progress.

7. Once the import is complete (indicated by a "Status": "completed" response), note down the generated AMI ID.

8. Access the AWS Management Console and navigate to the EC2 service.

9. Locate the AMI with the previously noted ID and launch a new virtual machine instance using this AMI.

10. Configure and connect to the launched virtual machine instance using Remote Desktop.

Azure

Creating a Virtual Machine in the Azure cloud from Zmanda Pro Disk Image Backup

This section details the process of creating a virtual machine in Microsoft Azure using Zmanda Pro Disk Image backup.

Prerequisites:

• An Azure account with access

• Installed and configured Microsoft Azure Command-Line Interface (CLI) - Install the Azure CLI for Windows
• (Optional) Prepare the target virtual machine (if using an existing one) - Prepare a Windows VHD to upload to Azure - Azure Virtual Machines

Steps:

1. Perform a restore in Zmanda Pro to generate the .vmdk files.

2. Note: The restored files will be the same size as the original disk. Ensure sufficient storage space exists in your chosen restore location.

3. Convert the .vmdk files to the Azure-compatible VHD format using a utility like QEMU.

4. Resize the VHD file size to a multiple of megabytes if necessary.

5. Create an empty managed disk on Azure using the az disk create command and specifying the appropriate size parameter.

6. Grant write access to the managed disk

VirtualBox

Creating a VirtualBox Virtual Machine from Zmanda Pro Disk Image Backup

This section guides you through utilizing a Zmanda Pro Disk Image backup to create a virtual machine within VirtualBox.

Prerequisites: VirtualBox software (version 6.x recommended if using MS Hyper-V concurrently, otherwise earlier versions work).

Steps:

1. Perform a Restore in Zmanda Pro: Initiate a restore of your desired system's disk image using Zmanda Pro.

2. Note on Storage Space: The restored disk files will possess the same size as the original disk. Ensure your designated restore location has sufficient storage capacity to accommodate these files.

3. VirtualBox and Disk Files: After the restore is complete, you'll have a set of .vmdk files representing the backed-up disks.

Creating the Virtual Machine in VirtualBox:

1. Launch VirtualBox: Open the VirtualBox application on your system.

2. Create a New Virtual Machine: Click the "New" button on the VirtualBox main screen to initiate the creation of a new virtual machine.

3. Allocate Resources: Allocate RAM and virtual hard disk space for the virtual machine based on your system's capabilities and the intended use of the virtual machine.

4. Adding the Hard Disk:

   • Open the Settings menu of the newly created virtual machine (you can usually right-click and select "Settings").

   • Navigate to the "Storage" section.

   • Select the "SATA Controller."

   • Click on "Add Hard Disk."

   • Choose the option to "Choose existing disk" and select the 1 KB descriptor file (labeled "disk.vmdk" by default) from the restored disk image files.

Finalizing and Starting the Virtual Machine:

1. Configure Additional Settings: After adding the hard disk, you can finalize the configuration of the virtual machine by specifying CPU, RAM, and other desired settings within the VirtualBox settings interface.

2. Start the Virtual Machine: Once satisfied with the configuration, click the "Start" button on the VirtualBox main screen to initiate the virtual machine.

By following these steps, you'll have successfully created a virtual machine within VirtualBox leveraging your Zmanda Pro Disk Image backup.