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Restoring Data

Vecta records snapshots and gives you a restic command; you run the restore yourself on the agent machine.

How restores work

Note

Restores are manual in the beta. Vecta does not copy files for you or provide a one-click restore.

Open Logs, find a successful run, and use its restore action. The dialog provides a copyable command. Change --target to a writable directory before running it, preferably an empty directory that is separate from live data.

The command has this form:

sudo restic restore <SNAPSHOT_ID> --repo "<DESTINATION>" --target ./restore/<SNAPSHOT_ID>

Replace <SNAPSHOT_ID> and <DESTINATION> with the values from the dashboard. The agent machine must have the destination credentials and repository password available. If the job runs successfully, those values are normally already configured there.

Restore without the dashboard

If you deleted the job or agent, the repository data still exists but Vecta no longer has its snapshot-ID records. List snapshots directly:

restic snapshots -r <DESTINATION>
sudo restic restore <SNAPSHOT_ID> --repo "<DESTINATION>" --target /path/to/restore

Replace each placeholder with your repository URL, snapshot ID, and target path. Supply the repository password through your normal restic mechanism. Snapshot IDs shown in the dashboard use an eight-character prefix; restic also accepts prefixes when they identify one snapshot.

Test your restores

After the first successful backup, restore a small set of files and check their contents. Repeat periodically, such as monthly, and test a recent snapshot. A backup you have never restored is a hypothesis rather than a verified recovery path.

Restore gotchas

  • Restore into a writable target, not over live production data.
  • Existing files in the target can be overwritten; use an empty directory when checking a backup.
  • Use root when restoring files that require root permissions.
  • Keep the repository password available. Vecta cannot reset it.

What's next

Read Your repository password, or return to Jobs to understand snapshot records and deletion warnings.