Using Acronis Active Restore for SQL database recovery

Active Restore is an Acronis proprietary technology. It brings a Microsoft SQL database online minutes after the database recovery is started. This allows users to access their data while the databases are still being recovered. Therefore, using Active Restore makes sense when you recover the databases to the Ready to use or Read-only state.

Active Restore supports the following backup locations:

• A local folder on the machine where the recovery is performed (except optical disks).
• Acronis Secure Zone.
• A network share.

To use Active Restore, enable it on the Recover data page under How to recover.

The recovery process

1. If the recovery task includes the master database, it is recovered first. During this process, the instance is in the single-user mode and, therefore, users cannot connect to it. After the database is recovered, the software restarts the instance.
2. The agent starts the recovery of other databases. Multiple databases are recovered in parallel.

   First, the databases are in the Restoring state and users have no access to them. After a short time, users obtain the read-write or read-only access to the databases, depending on the state specified in the recovery task settings.

   Details. The Acronis Active Restore drivers intercept user queries. The data required to service the queries is recovered with the highest priority; everything else is recovered in the background. As a result, users can access their data even though the databases are not yet recovered.

3. After the recovery is completed, the databases are reattached. This takes less than a minute.

Because the servicing of requests is performed simultaneously with recovery, the database operation can slow down even if recovery priority in the recovery options is set to Low. Although the database downtime is minimal, there may be reduced performance during recovery.