Discuss with expertTry it for free
© 2026 Direct Cursus Technology L.L.C.

Restoring a Compute Cloud VM or BareMetal server from a backup of another VM or server

Written by
Updated at August 5, 2026
View in Markdown

Note

You cannot restore a VM backup to a server or a server backup to a VM. However, you can restore an external server backup to a Yandex BareMetal server.

If a folder contains multiple VMs or servers connected to Cloud Backup, you can restore a VM or server from a backup of another VM or server, respectively. You may need this, for example, if the source VM or server is down.

To avoid errors when restoring from a backup, start by comparing the disks and partitions of the backup against those of the VM or server you are restoring to. For more information, see Viewing the parameters of backup disks and partitions.

Note

The target VM or server must have the same operating system as that of the VM or server the backup was created from. The boot disk of the target VM or server must be at least the size of the boot disk of the source VM or server. The target Compute Cloud VM or BareMetal server must be in Running status.

To restore a VM or server from a backup of another VM or server:

  1. In the management console, select the folder containing the backup.

  2. Navigate to Cloud Backup.

  3. In the left-hand panel, select Backups.

  4. Depending on what resource you want to restore, select the Virtual machines or BareMetal servers tab.

  5. In the line with the backup to restore the VM or server from, click and select Restore VM or Recover BareMetal server, respectively. In the window that opens:

    1. Select the Compute Cloud VM or BareMetal server to restore the backup to. If needed, click Create to create a new VM or to lease a new BareMetal server for recovery from a backup.

      If creating a new VM, wait until the VM connects to Cloud Backup. If leasing a new BareMetal server, connect it to Cloud Backup. Then click in the backup recovery window for the new VM or server to appear in the list.

    2. To avoid a conflict between the restored and the source VM, enable Delete the outdated VM (for VMs only).

      If this option is not selected, after the recovery the source VM you created the backup from will become outdated. To continue creating backups of this VM, refresh its connection to Cloud Backup.

    3. Click Restore.

  1. If you do not have the Yandex Cloud CLI yet, install and initialize it.

  2. The folder used by default is the one specified when creating the CLI profile. To change the default folder, use the yc config set folder-id <folder_ID> command. You can also specify a different folder for any command using --folder-name or --folder-id. If you access a resource by its name, the search will be limited to the default folder. If you access a resource by its ID, the search will be global, i.e., through all folders based on access permissions.

  3. See the description of the CLI command to restore a resource from a backup:

    yc backup backups recover --help

  4. Learn the IDs of the target resource to restore the backup to and the source resource whose backup you want to use:

    yc backup vm list

    Result:

    +----------------------+--------------------------------------+--------+---------+--------+-----------------+----------------+---------------------+---------------------+--------+---------------------+---------------------+-------------+
|     INSTANCE ID      |             RESOURCE ID              | ONLINE | ENABLED | STATUS | STATUS PROGRESS | STATUS DETAILS |  LAST BACKUP TIME   |  NEXT BACKUP TIME   | ACTIVE |     CREATED AT      |     UPDATED AT      |    TYPE     |
+----------------------+--------------------------------------+--------+---------+--------+-----------------+----------------+---------------------+---------------------+--------+---------------------+---------------------+-------------+
| ly5mzirn6xhd******** | 4fc0d855-b76c-****-99a4-bf01******** | true   | true    | IDLE   |               0 |                |                     |                     | true   | 2026-04-29 05:45:34 | 2026-04-29 05:54:21 | BMS         |
| epd930eo5156******** | 6c58577d-409d-****-bc10-f464******** | true   | true    | IDLE   |               0 |                |                     |                     | true   | 2026-04-29 08:46:47 | 2026-04-29 08:54:00 | COMPUTE     |
| cdgd246kiae3******** | d1fdd342-0ea8-****-9906-fa6c******** | false  | true    | IDLE   |               0 |                | 2026-04-27 13:07:05 | 2026-04-27 13:07:05 | true   | 2026-04-24 14:23:06 | 2026-04-29 08:54:33 | EXTERNAL_VM |
+----------------------+--------------------------------------+--------+---------+--------+-----------------+----------------+---------------------+---------------------+--------+---------------------+---------------------+-------------+

  5. Learn the ID of the source resource backup:

    yc backup backups list \
  --instance-id <source_resource_ID>

    Where --instance-id is the ID of the source resource whose backup you want to use.

    Result:

    +--------------------------------------+--------------------------------------+----------------------+--------------------------------------+----------------------+------+------------------+--------+---------------------+
|                  ID                  |              ARCHIVE ID              | COMPUTE INSTANCE ID  |             RESOURCE ID              |      POLICY ID       | TYPE |      DISKS       |  SIZE  |     CREATED AT      |
+--------------------------------------+--------------------------------------+----------------------+--------------------------------------+----------------------+------+------------------+--------+---------------------+
| 9cba836d-869c-41d2-8f25-0dac******** | 8a5b6d59-f7ce-0cb9-6cbf-151c******** | epdhmn8mdqmt******** | 7AF6A532-D1DC-4945-9D0C-E101******** | cdgiqu6ouch3******** | FULL | Disk 1 (13.0 GB) | 1.4 GB | 2023-07-11 05:10:09 |
| 05e964ca-6a8f-481a-b83e-44c5******** | 8a5b6d59-f7ce-0cb9-6cbf-151c******** | epdhmn8mdqmt******** | 7AF6A532-D1DC-4945-9D0C-E101******** | cdgiqu6ouch3******** | FULL | Disk 1 (15.0 GB) | 1.4 GB | 2023-07-11 05:00:07 |
+--------------------------------------+--------------------------------------+----------------------+--------------------------------------+----------------------+------+------------------+--------+---------------------+

  6. Restore the selected resource from the backup:

    yc backup backups recover \
  --source-backup-id <backup_ID> \
  --destination-instance-id <target_resource_ID>

    Where:

    • --source-backup-id: Backup ID.
    • --destination-instance-id: ID of the target VM or server to restore the backup to.

    Result:

    ...1s...6s...11s ... 9m4s...9m9s...done (9m9s)

    For more information about the command, see the CLI reference.

Use the startRecovery REST API method for the Backup resource or the BackupService/StartRecovery gRPC API call.

Note

If you are using LVM to manage the disk space of the protected resource, learn how to restore resources with LVM in Cloud Backup.

Following recovery from a backup, the source Compute Cloud VM (unless the Delete the outdated VM option was enabled in the management console during the backup) or source BareMetal server the backup was created from will become obsolete. To be able to create new backups of the source VM or BareMetal server, refresh their connection to Cloud Backup. For more information, see these guides: Reconnecting a VM to Cloud Backup and Reconnecting a Yandex BareMetal server to Cloud Backup.

Warning

After you recover a BareMetal server from another server’s backup, you may lose network access to the target server. This is because the network settings recovered from the backup, namely the network interface MAC addresses, were taken from the source server.

To restore the network on the target VM, update the MAC addresses in the server's network interface settings using the KVM console. You can get current MAC addresses in the server OS using the ip a command or in the management console on the server information page under Network interfaces. For more information on setting up network interfaces in a particular OS, see the relevant OS guides.

Useful links

Deleting a backup

Previous
Restoring an external VM or server from a backup
Next
Restoring individual directories and files from a backup