Restoring Azure DevOps Repositories to a Different App (Out of Place)

You can restore Azure repositories to a different app for the same or different organization, or to a disk (out of place).

Caution

All repository data in the destination location is overwritten by the restored data.

Review the following considerations for out-of-place restores:

If the project is present, then the metadata of the project is not modified.
If the project is not present, a new project is created with the same description and visibility as the source project. You can specify the name of the project during restore.
If the repository is not present, a new repository is created with the same name as the source repository.
All existing open pull requests are marked as abandoned, and all pull requests from the source repository are restored as-is.

Procedure

From the navigation pane, go to Protect > DevOps.

The DevOps page appears.
On the Azure DevOps tab, click the DevOps app.

The DevOps app page appears.
On the Repository groups tab, in the row for the repository group, click the action button , and then click Restore.

The Backup Content page appears.
Select the content to restore, and then click Restore.

You can select the entire organization, or specific projects and repositories on the app.

The Restore options dialog box appears.
Complete one of the following steps:
1. To restore to a different app, click the Out of place tab, and then enter the following information:
  - Destination app: Select the destination app for the restore.
  - Azure services: Select the Azure service to restore.
    
    Boards, Repos, Pipelines, Test Plans, and Artifacts are selected by default. To unselect, from the list, click the Azure service.
  - Organization name: Type the destination organization name.
  - Project name: Type the destination project name.
  - No of streams: Enter the number of streams to use for the restore.
2. To restore to a disk, click the Restore to disk tab, and then enter the following information:
  - Destination server: Select the destination server for the restore.
  - Azure services: Select the Azure service to restore.
    
    Boards, Repos, Pipelines, Test Plans, and Artifacts are selected by default. To unselect, from the list, click the Azure service.
  - Destination path: Type the destination path for the restore.
  - No of streams: Enter the number of streams to use for the restore.
Click Submit.
For restores to disk, only the index of the repository is restored. To restore files from the index of the repository, complete the following steps:
1. If, for example, C:\Temp\Restore\restored_repo is the destination repository for the restore operation, rename it to C:\Temp\Restore\restored_repo.git.
2. On the command line, type the following command:
```
git clone C:\Temp\Restore\restored_repo.git   C:\Temp\Restore\restored_repo
```
  The files are restored to the directory C:\Temp\Restore\restored_repo.