1
00:00:00,840 --> 00:00:02,940
Azure File Recovery.

2
00:00:02,940 --> 00:00:06,150
The use case for Azure file recovery is something like

3
00:00:06,150 --> 00:00:08,960
you get a very urgent phone call,

4
00:00:08,960 --> 00:00:12,490
text message, or email from your manager or another

5
00:00:12,490 --> 00:00:14,690
stakeholder who says something like,

6
00:00:14,690 --> 00:00:18,310
can you please restore that script I accidentally deleted

7
00:00:18,310 --> 00:00:21,750
from the Azure file server VM? Yes,

8
00:00:21,750 --> 00:00:25,120
being called into action not to restore an entire VM,

9
00:00:25,120 --> 00:00:27,230
not to swap out all of its storage,

10
00:00:27,230 --> 00:00:31,530
but just to find a singleton file or folder resource.

11
00:00:31,530 --> 00:00:35,560
This use case is primary for Azure file recovery.

12
00:00:35,560 --> 00:00:36,030
Okay,

13
00:00:36,030 --> 00:00:40,440
let's go over the Azure file recovery workflow step by step. You're going to

14
00:00:40,440 --> 00:00:43,550
choose which recovery point you want to bring into scope.

15
00:00:43,550 --> 00:00:48,550
This would hopefully contain the file system artifact that you need to restore.

16
00:00:48,550 --> 00:00:50,140
Of course, it goes without saying,

17
00:00:50,140 --> 00:00:52,600
but I'm going to say it anyway, that you're not going to

18
00:00:52,600 --> 00:00:56,750
be able to grab a resource from a backup snapshot unless

19
00:00:56,750 --> 00:00:58,230
it's actually been backed up.

20
00:00:58,230 --> 00:01:01,250
That is if you're doing your snapshots at 3 AM,

21
00:01:01,250 --> 00:01:05,800
someone creates a file at 4 AM, someone else deletes it at 11

22
00:01:05,800 --> 00:01:08,340
AM and you're asked to recover it at noon,

23
00:01:08,340 --> 00:01:10,040
that's not going to work.

24
00:01:10,040 --> 00:01:14,550
Okay, so what we do specifically in the next step depends upon whether

25
00:01:14,550 --> 00:01:19,200
you're trying to recover assets from a Windows or Linux VM in Azure.

26
00:01:19,200 --> 00:01:22,530
If your backup snapshot is from Windows,

27
00:01:22,530 --> 00:01:26,930
you'll download an executable. If you're recovering a Linux Azure VM,

28
00:01:26,930 --> 00:01:31,240
it'll be a Python script. And you'll unlock those scripts with a

29
00:01:31,240 --> 00:01:36,580
one‑time password that the Azure portal generates. The executable

30
00:01:36,580 --> 00:01:39,390
actually unpacks a PowerShell script.

31
00:01:39,390 --> 00:01:42,020
The Python script just does its work.

32
00:01:42,020 --> 00:01:47,040
But either way, whether you're dealing with the Python or the PowerShell script,

33
00:01:47,040 --> 00:01:52,480
those resources will mount all of the disks from the backup snapshot.

34
00:01:52,480 --> 00:01:56,760
And remember, that's going to be one and only one operating system disks and

35
00:01:56,760 --> 00:02:02,390
zero or more data disks that are there in this backup. The magic that takes

36
00:02:02,390 --> 00:02:06,090
place here is the iSCSI client on your machine.

37
00:02:06,090 --> 00:02:09,170
That would be in Windows the iSCSI initiator.

38
00:02:09,170 --> 00:02:13,810
The script actually taps in using iSCSI to create a mount.

39
00:02:13,810 --> 00:02:17,960
So the long story short is the disks from your backup snapshot

40
00:02:17,960 --> 00:02:21,540
appear to be local volumes on your system, and you have 12

41
00:02:21,540 --> 00:02:23,580
hours to recover files from them.

42
00:02:23,580 --> 00:02:26,770
You can literally use the command prompt or the mouse

43
00:02:26,770 --> 00:02:29,540
drag‑and‑drop to do that recovery.

44
00:02:29,540 --> 00:02:34,050
And then when you're finished, either you can let the 12 hours elapse or

45
00:02:34,050 --> 00:02:38,740
you can do an unmount operation from the Azure portal.

46
00:02:38,740 --> 00:02:42,640
Now you should know that Microsoft very heavily throttles this

47
00:02:42,640 --> 00:02:47,430
connection. It's not meant for you to recover multi‑gigabyte files

48
00:02:47,430 --> 00:02:51,040
like database backups and stuff like that.

49
00:02:51,040 --> 00:02:55,100
Azure file recovery is meant for you to just grab, like I said, an

50
00:02:55,100 --> 00:02:58,120
accidentally deleted document or script file,

51
00:02:58,120 --> 00:03:01,800
something like that that's relatively small, but would be way

52
00:03:01,800 --> 00:03:06,720
too time intensive for you to do say a disk restore just to get

53
00:03:06,720 --> 00:03:17,000
a few files from that snapshot. So it has its place, but Microsoft has put controls in place to prevent abuse.