Recovery cheat sheet

The following table summarizes the available recovery methods. Use the table to choose a recovery method that best fits your need.

What to recover	Recovery method
Physical machine (Windows or Linux)	Using the web interface Using bootable media
Physical machine (Mac)	Using bootable media
Virtual machine (VMware or Hyper-V)	Using the web interface Using bootable media
ESXi configuration	Using bootable media
Files/Folders	Using the web interface Downloading files from the cloud storage Using bootable media Extracting files from local backups
System state	Using the web interface
SQL databases	Using the web interface
Exchange databases	Using the web interface
Exchange mailboxes	Using the web interface
Office 365 mailboxes	Using the web interface
Oracle databases	Using Oracle Explorer tool

Note for Mac users

Starting with 10.11 El Capitan, certain system files, folders, and processes are flagged for protection with an extended file attribute com.apple.rootless. This feature is called System Integrity Protection (SIP). The protected files include preinstalled applications and most of the folders in /system, /bin, /sbin, /usr.
The protected files and folders cannot be overwritten during a recovery under the operating system. If you need to overwrite the protected files, perform the recovery under bootable media.
Starting with macOS Sierra 10.12, rarely used files can be moved to iCloud by the Store in Cloud feature. Small footprints of these files are kept on the file system. These footprints are backed up instead of the original files.
When you recover a footprint to the original location, it is synchronized with iCloud and the original file becomes available. When you recover a footprint to a different location, it cannot be synchronized and the original file will be unavailable.