Local runner

The artifact stays with the client; only normalized evidence is sent to RestorSignal.

Local mode is the execution mode in which the RestorSignal runner executes inside an environment the client provides and controls — a server, a VM, a container, or any other infrastructure the client makes available for the test.

What stays with the client

In Local mode, the backup artifact never leaves the client's environment. The Test Pack — the control protocol that runs during the restore — also stays local. The restore itself, along with the business data it handles, takes place entirely inside that environment. The client triggers the execution; RestorSignal never connects to a backup console at any point to fetch anything on its own.

What is sent to RestorSignal

What RestorSignal receives in this mode is limited to the information needed to build the evidence package: tenant id, context id, test id, runner type and version, date, duration, type and size of the restored object, cryptographic fingerprint, engine version, control results (PASS, FAIL, or ERROR), normalized technical errors, and other information relevant to the evidence package. The restored business data itself is not sent to RestorSignal in this mode. The full inventory of what may be sent is detailed in Data transfers.

The signing chain

Conceptually, every local execution follows a chain: the client triggers the test through the RestorSignal orchestrator, which issues a job id along with a nonce and an expiration; these are handed to an identified runner, which performs the restore and runs the controls; the result is hashed, then signed by the local agent; finally, RestorSignal's central API verifies that signature on receipt.

This signature guarantees the integrity of the received packet and the identity of the agent that produced it, within the limits of the environment the client controls. One important limitation deserves to be stated plainly: this signature does not, by itself, prove that the local host was never compromised before or during the test. That is a structural limit of Local mode, reflected in the execution trust level associated with the run — see Isolation for the protections applied to the execution sandbox.

Volume and pricing

Local mode decouples the size of the stored backup from the volume of data sent to RestorSignal. A 1.2 TB dump can be restored and controlled entirely on the client's own infrastructure without that volume ever transiting to the RestorSignal platform — only normalized evidence, negligible in size by comparison, is sent. Local-mode pricing is therefore not based on the size of the backups the client keeps. This does not apply to the disposable-environment mode, where the volume transferred can legitimately affect cost, because of the cloud resources it actually consumes — see Disposable environment.