Restoring from an Incremental Backup with Journal Archiving

This section describes how to restore a database if journal archiving was enabled for the last backup.

To restore from an incremental backup, the server uses the base backup in the backup tag to get a series of incremental backups that lead to the full backup. The restore then starts with a full backup and restores using the incremental backups in reverse order. You need to specify the full backup directory and, optionally, the incremental backup directory. If no restore timestamp is specified, the server finds the latest backup from which to restore. Once you have completed this process, you can use journal archiving to restore the database to the current time.

If a restore timestamp is specified, then the server finds a backup with a restore timestamp between the minimum query timestamp and the backup timestamp. If no backup meets the requirement and there is a journal archive, then the server finds the latest backup with a backup timestamp smaller than the restored timestamp. It restores to that backup and then replays the journal to the restored timestamp.

If the journal archive exists, then the server finds the backup timestamp of the last incremental backup and replays the journal starting from that timestamp.

This procedure describes how to restore a database to the current point in time using a full backup, one or more incremental backups, and journal archiving. You need to have a full backup using journal archiving and one or more incremental backups using journal archiving.

To restore a database to the current point in time, follow these steps:

1. Click Databases in the left tree menu. A list of databases appears.

2. Click your target database.

3. Click the Backup/Restore tab.

4. Scroll to the Restore section.

5. In the Restore from directory field, enter the directory where the backup exists.

   Note:
   
   If you enter a directory that contains multiple backups of the same database, the latest one is used. If you want to choose a particular backup to restore, enter the date_stamp subdirectory corresponding to the backup you want to restore. For details of the directory structure, see Backup Directory Structure.

6. If you have configured forests for local-disk failover, and you want to restore the replica forests from the backup, then set Include replica forests to true. To use this option, you must have enabled the Include replica forests option when you backed up. See Configuring Local-Disk Failover for a Forest in Scalability, Availability, and Failover.

7. Set Use incremental backup to true. Set Use journal archive to true. Leave Restore to time blank or enter a time in xs:DataTime-Format.

   Note:
   
   For journal archiving to work, you need a Restore to time. Otherwise, the restore proceeds with last incremental backup that it finds at the location. Also, the merge timestamp should be older than the restore time.

   When restoring a backup with journal archiving enabled, be sure to change the merge timestamp from 0 to a non-zero value. Using 0 for the merge timestamp results in an error when restoring with journal archiving and a Restore to time set to 0. The merge timestamp must be set to a non-zero value. See Restoring to a Specific Timestamp

8. Click OK to begin the restore process. The Confirm restore page lists the options that you selected for restoring. Click OK.

The Restores table lists when the restore was started, provides an estimate of the amount of time left, and lists other status information about the restore operation.

When the process is complete, the Restores table entry disappears.