How to restore disks or volumes from Acronis boot media

This article covers the process of completing a Volume restore in Acronis, also known as a Bare Metal Restore (BMR), using the Acronis Boot Media.

This guide is built off the assumption that you will be using the standard Acronis Restoration ISO (Boot_media.iso). If you need to update this file or need it for any other reason, you can get a custom one for your Protected Machine in the Acronis portal, from the Recovery section of any backed-up Device:

Within the Acronis Portal under Devices → All Devices → select the machine you want to generate an ISO for → Within Recovery select More ways to recover…:
Select Download ISO (64-BIT) Image to download your ISO.

Mounting the ISO

The ISO will need to be mounted via IPMI for dedicated servers, a guide for accessing IPMI/Remote Console is below,

How to access IPMI / Remote Console

Supermicro:

In the event that your server is on a Supermicro server, it can be mounted via the following steps:

Go to: Virtual Media → CD-ROM Image
From there you can mount the Acronis boot media from our IPMI server using these details:
```
Share Host: 10.9.0.1
Path to Image: /iso/Boot_media.iso
```
Click Mount to mount the ISO:
Now, you can reset the power on the server through Remote Control → Power Control → Reset Server → Perform Action to reboot:

HPE:

In the event that your server is on a HPE server, it can be mounted via the following steps:

Go to: Remote Console & Media → Virtual Media → Connect CD/DVD-ROM → Enter in the Virtual Media URL shown below → Check the box Boot on Next Reset → Click Insert Media:
```
http://10.9.0.1:81/Boot_media.iso
```
This can be done within Power & Thermal → Server Power → and clicking Reset:

It should now boot into the ISO automatically. If it does not, or you choose to boot into the ISO manually, please follow the below section.

Booting into the ISO:

For Supermicro servers, you will need to boot into the ISO manually. If you have a HPE server, and it booted into the ISO, please skip ahead to Configure Networking.

Booting the ISO manually can be done via the Boot Menu (press F11 during Post to access), or via the Boot Override in the system BIOS as shown::
This should then show with a black screen with Starting Acronis Loader… visible on the screen.
It will then start up and present the following screen for the Acronis Rescue Media. This will by default choose Continue OS Booting, you will need to use the keyboard to change it to Rescue Media and press Enter:
From there, allow it to load, as it may take some time:
After which, you will see a GUI, bringing us to configure the networking.

Configure Networking:

For a restore of the server, the Public NIC will need to be configured for the restore to take place over. Go ahead and click Configure network:
Where to find your Network Details
This can be found under your dedicated server or cloud server within the Network tab. You can follow this guide to get to the same area: How can I retrieve the login details to my Virtual/Dedicated Server?
I have multiple adapters?
On Dedicated Servers, they are configured with a Public and a Private interface. With very rare exceptions, the public interface will be eth0, whilst eth1 is the private interface. Use eth0 to configure your network, and in the rare case that it doesn’t work, reattempt using eth1 instead as your public interface.

In the example for this case, we will be using the one adapter eth0 for clarity.
We can see our Network Adapter here, eth0, which currently has an APIPA address configured as it was unable to find its’ public address via DHCP. We are going to disable Auto Configuration so that we can edit the IP:
We are then going to set the details to match the details for our server from the MySAU Portal, and then hit OK:
It will then apply the configuration:
And bring you back to the Bootable Backup Agent screen. From here select Manage this machine locally:

Accessing the Backups:

You will be presented with the GUI for the Acronis Startup Recovery Manager. Click on Recover:
Under Select Data… click Required:
Within the new window, Data to Recover Selection, select Browse:
This is where you define where the backup you’re restoring from is located. Within Cloud Storage select Log In:
Using your Acronis User credentials, fill in the Account Credentials:
Under Cloud Storage, this user will now exist for the account. Select it and click OK:
Access Credentials
If you are then asked for Access Credentials, it means that Encryption is enabled on your Protection Plan. This is off by default. If enabled, you will need to enter the password here. Please ensure that this has been kept safe, as we do not have the ability to obtain this password for you.

This will bring you to the Data to Recover Selection window, where you can now begin your restore.

Starting the Restore

The Data to Recover Selection screen is busy, but will be broken down into an Archive for each machine that is backed up under your account. The Locates On column refers to the name of the machine within Devices → All Devices within your Acronis portal:

Corresponds to the Archive shown in the Data to Recover Selection window:

Within the Data to Recover Selection window, under the Machine/Archive you’re restoring, you will need to select the Recovery Point that you want to restore from:
Click Hide Archives and backups, this will make the next panel more visible:
Within the Backup contents panel, Volumes will be the preselected type. In the event of a BMR, this is almost always going to include everything present unless this is a custom restore only looking at particular partitions or disks. Once configured, click OK:
This will bring you to a new page, specifically Recovery Bootable Media, where you can configure the recovery operation itself. This will take some time to load/populate dependent on the size of the server:
From there, review the configuration it generates and ensure that it matches your expectations. Pressing OK will begin the restore, but if you need to change something you can change the configuration under Recovery Options… and clicking Default:
Recovery Options
Within this you can configure the following:
- Check the file system post recovery - Automatically scans and repairs the file system after recovery, before you would boot into the OS.
- Restart the machine automatically after recovery is finished - This will automatically restart the machin after recovery finishes.
- Silent Mode - Do not show messages and dialogue whilst processing.
- Re-attempt, if an error occurs - This is on by default, and is configured to retry 30 times, with an interval of 30 seconds between attempts.
- Use a Disk Cache to accelerate the recovery - This is intended for recovering large files from tape-based storage, this would create a temporary cache on the machine where a tape device is attached. This is not applicable to our Acronis Infrastructure and should be left disabled.
Once you have pressed OK to begin the recovery, it will open a new window that monitors the details of this recovery:
You can monitor the progress within the Progress Tab. Please note that the time shown here is UTC time:
After 10 minutes, it finished restoring. Please keep in mind that this time will vary dependent on size, the server being restored and its’ hardware, as well as what is actually present in the partitions being restored. If this was configured to reboot automatically, it will do so at this stage. If this has been left to default we will need to click Close to continue:
From here, within Actions, select Exit.
Then select Reboot within the Bootable Backup Agent screen:
This will reboot the server. Monitor this to ensure that it comes back up as intended: