A bare-metal restore is a full server recovery used in disaster scenarios — such as complete hardware failure. It restores your entire server including the operating system, applications, and all data from a backup to new hardware.
Warning: This process will completely overwrite all data on the target drives. It is a last resort for disaster recovery — only proceed if you intend to fully replace the existing system.
The entire process runs through a special recovery environment launched from the PowerPanel:
The restore environment takes approximately 10 minutes to start. Once ready, connect to your server's IP address on port 5900 using a VNC client.
After connecting with your VNC client, locate and open your backup archive:
If your backup is encrypted, you will be prompted to enter your encryption password before you can proceed.
This is the most critical step — you map the backed-up data to the target physical disks.
At the bottom of the screen, select the checkboxes for MBRs and Basic drives. The Master Boot Record (MBR) must be included for the server to be bootable after the restore.
Software RAID: If you are restoring a software RAID configuration, you must also select the Dynamic volumes (e.g. md0, md1).
Go through each line marked as "Required" and map the backed-up partitions (e.g. sda1, sda2) to their corresponding new physical disks (e.g. Disk 1, Disk 2). Once all mappings are complete and no "Required" labels remain, click OK at the bottom of the page to start the restore.
A progress bar shows the status of the data recovery. Once the restore is complete, the server must be rebooted into its newly restored operating system.
Critical final step: Do not reboot from within the Acronis VNC interface. Instead, go to your PowerPanel and cancel rescue mode via Hardware → Server Management → Actions → Abort Rescue. This will reboot the server from its hard drives and boot into the restored system.
For detailed information on bare-metal restore options and advanced recovery scenarios, refer to the official Acronis documentation.