Home > Data Protection > PowerProtect Data Manager > PowerProtect Data Manager: Microsoft SQL Database Backup and Recovery > SQL instant access
An instant access recovery enables you to quickly bring a database online from a point-in-time by running the database directly on protection storage, which is added to the host through a backup image mount.
Instant access recovery enables you to access a live-mounted SQL database from protection storage without restoring the virtual machine or SQL database. This type of operation is useful for database administrators to query a SQL database before restoring the database due to time and resource constraints. This feature also supports the migration of mounted disks containing live mounted databases from protection storage to production datastore.
Important: Instant access is only supported for application-aware copy, and not for Application Direct backups.
When you initiate instant access recovery, the operation locates the corresponding backup virtual disks and mounts them from the DD protection storage. The operation locates the SQL Server database selected by the database administrator from mounted disks and connects the database to the SQL Server instance. If transaction logs were selected, the transaction logs are replayed against the instant access database.
The following figure shows the steps for SQL Instant access using the vProxy engine SSMS plug-in: