Active Backup for Business Recovery Wizard

Active Backup for Business supports bare metal and volume level backup and restoration through a preconfigured recovery media. This article will explain how the recovery media works when restoring the entire machine with a specific backed up version stored on the Synology NAS. For more information on how to configure the recovery media, please refer to Recovery Media Creation Guide.

Requirements and Limitations

Note:

Dynamic disks are not supported for bare-metal restore.

Active Backup for Business Recovery Wizard Overview

Recovery

To restore a version from the server:

  1. Please enter the BIOS menu of your device by pressing the necessary key, and change the boot order to boot the recovery media fisrtly since the recovery process starts from rebooting the target device. Save this change and reboot the device. This time you should enter the Active Backup for Business recovery media wizard.
  2. Load drivers and network adapters:

    Recovery can fail when lacking any necessary driver. To ensure a smoother recovery process, it is strongly suggested to double check the installed drivers and adapters in this step.

  3. Log in to the Synology NAS:

    Enter the server IP or domain name and credentials to log in to the Synology NAS to retrieve the stored versions. The devices and versions which you can see in the next two steps is based on your logged in account.

  4. Select the device and the task:

    Once logged in, all the available backed up device and tasks for the logged in account will be displayed. The information of backup type and Last Backup Time is listed on the table. Last Backup Time refers to the start time of the last backup.

  5. Select a version:

    Versions of the selected task are displayed on the left panel for you to choose. Detail information of the selected version is displayed on the right panel.

  6. Note:

    The capacity of each installed hard disk on the device has to be more than or equal to the corresponding backup disk in the selected version. Even when the total capacity of all installed hard disk is more than or equal to the total capacity of the selected version, the capacity of individual hard disk still needs to be more or equal.

  7. Check and confirm the summary to start the recovery process:

    Please note that recovery is an irreversible action. Once started, it is not allowed to be stopped and rolled back to where it was before the recovery. Cancellation during the process may lead to incapability of booting the device.

  8. Finish and reboot:

    Click Finish and decide if you wish to reboot the device or turn it off when the recovery is ready. Please remove the recovery media before rebooting the device.

To cancel the recovery:

  1. Click on Cancel at the bottom of the wizard to cancel the recovery before it finishes. Please note that both recovery and cancellation is irreversible.
  2. Click Finish to choose either to reboot the device or turn it off.

To retrieve "recovery.log" and send it to Synology Technical Support when recovery failed:

When a bare metal or volume level recovery has failed, you may retrieve the "recovery.log" file and send it to Synology Technical Support for further assistance. Please note that "recovery.log" is only retrievable on Recovery Wizard before you restart or turn off your device.

To retrieve the "recovery.log" file, please follow the below steps:

  1. Click at the top right corner of the wizard to open the context menu.
  2. Click Command-line interface to launch command-line interface.
  3. Enter the below command to launch Notepad:

    notepad

  4. Choose Open in the notepad, and check the drive letter of the inserted USB drive. For example, if the drive letter of the inserted USB drive is “S”, please enter the below command to copy the log to the USB:

    copy X:\ActiveBackup\recovery.log S:

    A message confirming the action of copying the file will appear after entering this command.
  5. Go to the USB drive where you copied the log file to, and send the file named "recovery.log" to Synology Technical Support for further troubleshooting.