Restoring a Vault

Even if a document vault is destroyed or the data is somehow corrupted, you can always restore the healthy vault from a backup. For more information about creating backups, see Backing Up a Vault and Scheduled Backup Jobs.

Note: You can restore the backup only on a server whose M-Files Server version is the same as or later than the version on the server that is used to create the backup. If you restore the backup on a server that has a later version, see Upgrading Vaults.

Note: If you use Microsoft SQL Server as the database engine of your vault, see Backing Up Microsoft SQL Server Databases for instructions on how to back up and restore your vault data.

Video: M-Files Administrator: Backup and Restore an M-Files Vault

Do the following steps to restore a document vault from a backup file:

Open M-Files Admin.
In the left-side tree view, expand a connection to M-Files server.
Click Document Vaults.
In the task area, click Restore Document Vault.
Result:The Restore Document Vault dialog is opened.
In the Full backup field, specify the location of the backup file on the server from which the full backup is to be restored.
Optional: In the Differential backup (optional) field, specify the location of the differential backup file to restore a differential backup on top of the full backup.
Select either:
- Restore using original identity: Select this option to use the existing ID of the document vault.
  or
- Restore as a different vault (new identity): Select this option to generate a new unique ID and to specify a new name for the vault to be restored.
The identity is used in establishing document vault connections to the server. The name of the vault can be changed on the server, and the document vault connection can have any name in the client software of the end user.
In the Location for vault data on server field, specify the location where the data of the document vault is saved.
Optional: Click Advanced... if you want to define a separate location for file data.
Optional: Select the Overwrite existing files check box if you want to overwrite existing files in the selected metadata and file data locations.
Click OK.
Result:The Attach Vault Options dialog is opened.
Select the features to be disabled in the attached vault:
- External object types and value lists: Connections to external databases for object types and value lists
- Connections to external sources
- Reporting and metadata export data sets
- Scheduled export and import jobs
- Active Directory user group synchronization
- Event handlers
- Vault applications
- Remote full-text search indexes: Search indexes that are not used by dtSearch
- Anonymous login
If you do not know which features to disable, do not make changes.

Change the setting Ignore vault options listed below for multi-server mode vault that is already attached to at least one server only if you have a good reason to do so. If the vault is not part of multi-server mode setup, the setting has no effect even when it is enabled.
In the Attach Vault dialog, click Attach.

A document vault is restored from the selected backup file.

The users of the document vault must add a connection to it in M-Files Desktop settings. For instructions, see Adding a Vault Connection.