Guidelines for restoring SnapManager backups

Guidelines for choosing the type of restore to perform

Follow these general guidelines to help you decide whether to use a point-in-time or up-to-the-minute restore:

If you want to roll forward all the transactions up to the most current time, use an up-to-the-minute restore.
If you want to recover the databases as they were at a particular point in time, for example, at the point when the most recent backup was created, use a point-in-time restore.
For to an up-to-the-minute restore to succeed, a contiguous set of all required transaction logs must be in the SnapInfo folder and the storage group transaction log directory.
After a point-in-time restore of a backup that is not the most recent one, all existing backups become point-in-time restorable only. Backups created after the restore will be available for up-to-the-minute restores.
After a point-in-time restore of the most recent backup, you can still perform an up-to-the-minute restore from any backup, including the most recent backup. However, you will lose all transactions that occurred between when you created the last backup and when you performed the point-in-time restore.
For more information about why this occurs, see About performing an up-to-the-minute restore after a point-in-time restore from the most recent backup.
If you are restoring individual databases, you can perform only an up-to-the-minute restore.

Follow these guidelines when restoring from a SnapManager backup:

If possible, you should always use the most recent backup for an up-to-the-minute restore. Otherwise, more transaction logs need to be replayed, causing the restore to take more time.
The most recent backup's name contains recent if you did not use the unique name option, or the most recent time stamp if you did.
You can restore an entire storage group, or, if you configured your data store appropriately, individual databases. If you need to restore more than one storage group, you must run SnapManager Restore more than once.
If you renamed a storage group since the backup was made, you cannot recover it from a backup taken before the storage group was renamed.
- If you rename a storage group, make sure that you back it up as soon as possible.
- If you must recover a storage group from a backup taken before the storage group was renamed, rename the storage group back to its old name, then recover it from the backup.