Start and use a Restore Workspace

A Restore Workspace is the durable control surface for one catalog-backed recovery attempt.

Start or resume

1. Open Backups and select an available catalog entry.
2. Review provenance, payload state, integrity, advisories, and Matrix identity.
3. Choose Restore.
4. When an active workspace already exists, the same action becomes Resume.

MEM redirects to /restores/<restoreSessionId>. The restore-session ID remains stable across refreshes and is the reference to keep in incident notes.

Standard workflow

The Standard tab presents five operator steps:

1. Backup ready — confirms the catalog source is usable.
2. Private test — optional isolated database import and Synapse health proof.
3. Choose and create restored server — preflight target details and execute Standard Recreate.
4. Check restored server — run fresh public Matrix, Element, route, and connectivity checks.
5. Complete and hand over — acknowledge the verified service and retain the workspace as an audit record.

The current actionable, failed, running, or latest completed step opens automatically when the workspace is revisited.

Workspace tabs

• Standard — guided recovery stages.
• Activity — durable stage and event timeline.
• Logs — structured, filterable restore events.
• Evidence — curated successes, warnings, and failures.
• Configuration — safe source, target, claim, and operation facts.
• Advanced — exceptional tools; unavailable tools show an explicit reason.

Source and target are separate

The source card identifies the catalog payload. The target is initially unselected. Standard Recreate preserves the Matrix server identity from the backup while allowing a new stack slug and an available Element host.

Durable evidence

Refreshing the browser does not create a new attempt. Operations, target claims, warnings, errors, evidence, and logs remain associated with the restore-session ID.

When the catalog payload is later permanently deleted, the workspace remains readable for audit and support, but guided actions that need the source are blocked.

[!IMPORTANT] Do not operate a restore from the uploaded-ZIP detail page. Validation and retained archive management are ingestion concerns. All recovery execution begins from the Backup Catalog and continues in the Restore Workspace.