Backup copy targets are used to retain copies of your backups on storage external to the appliance. Backup copies provide another layer of protection for your data and should be used for longer-term retention and disaster recovery. Retention options vary depending on the backup copy target, but all targets enable you to define settings for long-term retention.
Backup copy management and administration procedures vary by type. Once you have added a backup copy target, proceed to the applicable backup copy management topic for additional considerations.
Note: The types of backup copy targets supported vary by Unitrends appliance model. For example, attached disk is not supported on Recovery-Series appliances. When adding backup copy targets to an appliance, only supported types display in the Configure > Appliances > Backup Copy Targets > Add Target list.
Use these procedures to add backup copy targets to your Unitrends appliance:
You can use Unitrends Cloud Backup to store copies of your backups. To purchase this offering, go to http://www.unitrends.com/products/cloud-solutions/unitrends-cloud-backup.
To add a Unitrends Cloud backup copy target
1 | On the Configure > Appliances page, select your appliance. |
2 | Click the Backup Copy Targets tab. |
3 | Select Add Target > Unitrends > Unitrends Cloud. |
4 | Enter your Unitrends Cloud license string in the text box and click Submit. |
5 | Final configuration steps occur in the background and can take up to 15 minutes to complete. When complete, you see the following: |
• | A Unitrends Cloud device has been added as a backup copy target. |
• | The Unitrends appliance name has been modified to include an additional 12 characters, required to uniquely identify this appliance in the Unitrends Cloud. |
6 | Fine-tune settings as described in Configuring connection options. |
7 | Create a job to start copying backups to the Unitrends Cloud. For details, see To create a backup copy job for a Unitrends Cloud target. |
Before adding the backup copy target, verify that appliance requirements have been met and seed the target appliance.
An appliance must meet these requirements to be used as a backup copy target:
• | Must be a UEB appliance or a Recovery-Series model listed in the Recovery-Series Appliance Family Datasheet. |
Note: UEB on Hyper-V and UEB on VMware appliances can be used either as a backup appliance or as a backup copy target. These appliances cannot perform both roles. Recovery-Series and UEB installable software appliances can be used as both a backup appliance and a backup copy target, if desired.
• | For UEB, the appliance must be licensed and registered. |
• | Must have at least 128GB of available backup storage space. |
• | A secure VPN tunnel will be created as part of the configuration process. You will need to identify a subnet not in use in your environment (default is 172.17.3/24). |
For large data sets, Unitrends recommends that you seed the initial data set to the backup copy target using removable media (disk or NAS). This greatly reduces the time required to copy the first backups.
To add the Unitrends backup copy target appliance
This procedure uses the following terms:
• | Backup copy target is the appliance that will be receiving and storing backup copies. |
• | Source backup appliance is the appliance running the local backups that will be copied to the target appliance |
Do these steps on the backup copy target appliance
1 | On the Configure > Appliances page, select the desired target appliance and click Edit. |
2 | On the Backup Copy tab, check Enable this appliance as a Backup Copy Target and enter the following to configure a secure tunnel connection: |
• | Secure Network IP - This must be an unused network in your environment. |
• | Secure Netmask IP - The netmask associated with the secure network above. |
• | Secure Port - Port number to use for OpenVPN. |
3 | Click Save. |
Do these steps on the source backup appliance
1 | On the Configure > Appliances page, select the source backup appliance. |
2 | Click the Backup Copy Targets tab. |
3 | Select Add Target > Unitrends > Unitrends appliance. |
4 | Enter the Host Name and Host IP address of the backup copy target appliance and click Save. |
5 | Unless you have previously installed your own custom security certificates on the target appliance, you receive a Connection could not be verified warning. As long as you trust your network configuration, it is safe to click Continue. |
6 | After clicking Continue, it takes several minutes to configure the OpenVPN tunnels. Wait for the confirmation message indicating that the appliance has been added as a backup copy target before continuing with this procedure. |
Return to the backup copy target appliance and do these steps
1 | On the Configure > Appliances page, select the source appliance. The source has an ! icon and is in Pending status. |
2 | Double-click the ! icon and enter the following: |
• | Select Allow backup copies to be sent from the source device. |
• | Select the desired storage device where backup copies from this source will be stored. |
3 | Click Save, then OK to close the confirmation message. |
4 | Final configuration steps occur in the background and can take up to 20 minutes to complete. When the source appliance status changes from Pending to Not Available, configuration is complete and the target is ready for use. On the source backup appliance, the backup copy target's status is now Online. |
Note: The Not Available status simply means that the target appliance does not have credentials to manage the source beyond receiving its backup copies.
5 | Fine-tune settings as described in |
6 | Create a job to start copying your backups, as described in To create a backup copy job for a Unitrends appliance target. |
For Unitrends Cloud and Unitrends appliance backup copy targets, the following options can be fine-tuned for optimal performance in your environment:
Option | Description | Procedure | |||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Backup copy queue scheme |
The queue scheme determines the order in which backups are copied to the target:
|
See To configure connection options. | |||||||||
Backup copy concurrency | The Max Concurrent Backup Copies setting determines how many backups can be copied concurrently. While the default setting of two is adequate for most deployments, you may wish to increase the concurrency when you have enough WAN bandwidth to support more concurrent replications. | See To configure connection options. | |||||||||
Suspending backup copies | Use to stop sending backup copies from the source appliance. This option may become necessary when either your target appliance or the connection to your target becomes unavailable for an extended period of time. | See To configure connection options. | |||||||||
Backup copy bandwidth throttling |
If the WAN connection to your backup copy target is shared with general purpose Internet use during normal business hours, you may wish to throttle the amount of bandwidth that backup copies can use during these hours. |
See To set bandwidth throttling. |
1 | Select Configure > Appliances. |
2 | Select the source backup appliance and click the Backup Copy Targets tab below. |
3 | Click Configure Bandwidth. |
4 | Choose the Connection Type that most closely matches your WAN bandwidth |
5 | Click Add Schedule. |
6 | Choose the Throttle percentage, time of day, and days of week, then click Save. |
7 | Repeat as necessary to create additional throttling schedules. |
1 | Select Configure > Appliances. |
2 | Select the source backup appliance and click Edit. |
3 | On the Backup Copy tab, modify settings and click Save. |
Use this procedure to add an eSATA or USB backup copy target. For eSATA and USB devices, you must prepare new drives before using them for the first time. Preparing the drives erases all the data on them.
Additional considerations for using a device with multiple drives:
• | All drives attached to a single appliance must have equal capacity. Drives may be of varying capacity if they are attached to different appliances. |
• | Within the backup copy target, all drives attached to a single appliance are treated as one logical device. When you add a multi-drive device and prepare the drives, the appliance formats them as a single unit. Data is then written across all drives as if they are one larger drive. Once you copy backups to the device, these drives must be treated as a single entity. You must remove them as a set and, to recover data, you must insert all drives in the set back into the eSATA or USB device so the appliance can read and import backup data. If you separate a drive from the set, all data is lost. |
1 | Connect the eSATA or USB device to the Unitrends appliance. For details, see the instructions you received with the device. |
2 | On the Configure > Appliances page, select the source backup appliance. |
3 | Click the Backup Copy Targets tab below. |
4 | Click Scan For Media. |
5 | Select the media and click Prepare. |
Warning! The Prepare procedure permanently deletes any existing data and formats the drive.
6 | Create a job to start copying your backups, as described in To create a backup copy job for an eSATA or USB disk target. |
You can use cloud storage managed by select providers to store copies of your backups. Use this procedure to add cloud storage to your appliance as a backup copy target.
Cloud storage must meet these requirements to be used as a backup copy target:
• | You must have an account with one of the following cloud storage providers: Google Cloud Storage Standard, Google Cloud Storage Nearline, Amazon S3, or Rackspace. For details about creating an account and purchasing storage, see KB 3649. |
• | For bucket names, only the following characters are supported: upper and lowercase letters, numbers, dots, and dashes. Buckets with names containing other characters cannot be added to a Unitrends appliance. |
• | For Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage Standard, and Google Cloud Storage Nearline, you can use existing buckets that follow the supported naming conventions identified above. However, we recommend that you create unique folders for your Unitrends data. |
• | Amazon S3’s Reduced Redundancy Storage (RRS) option is not supported. |
You must enter the following account information when adding a cloud backup copy target to the appliance:
• | Credentials for the storage bucket that you are adding to the appliance. |
Note: These are the credentials you use to access the particular bucket or container that you are adding to the appliance, and not the username and password you use to log in to your storage provider account. If you do not know these credentials, contact your storage provider. Unitrends does not have access to this information.
• | Name of the cloud storage provider. |
• | Name of the bucket that you are adding to the appliance. |
Additional considerations:
• | Accounting and billing management for your cloud storage occur between you and the storage provider. You cannot manage your cloud storage account from the appliance’s UI, and Unitrends cannot answer questions about this account. You must contact your provider with any questions you have about your cloud storage account. |
• | It is extremely important that you understand the amount of data you are copying and the related charges from your cloud storage provider. To manage the amount of space you are using in cloud storage, you should specify a storage threshold. |
• | Sending backup copies to the cloud does not require any special network configurations. Just add a backup copy cloud target to the appliance and create backup copy jobs. |
• | The speed at which backup copies can be sent to the cloud depends on a number of factors, including memory and network bandwidth. We recommend that you test a small backup copy to determine the speed prior to sending larger backup copies to the cloud. |
• | When recovering backup copies from the cloud, the cloud backup copy target can be attached to any Unitrends appliance. You do not have to recover to the original appliance. |
• | If you add a backup copy target and the appliance recognizes backups on it, those backups are automatically imported and are available in the Backup Catalog for recovery. |
It is extremely important that you monitor the amount of backup data that your Unitrends appliance is copying to the cloud because cloud storage providers charge based on the amount of storage you use. When adding cloud backup copy target to the appliance, you can specify a storage threshold equal to the maximum amount of space the appliance can use to store backup copies in the cloud storage bucket.
You can monitor the amount of data in your cloud storage from the Storage tile on the Dashboard or from the Configure > Appliance > Backup Copy Targets page.
About the storage threshold for cloud backup copy targets
The storage threshold setting for cloud backup copy targets is intended to aid in managing the total amount of data you are copying to the cloud. The user-defined storage threshold functions as a maximum amount of data the appliance can write to the cloud bucket.
Note that there are instances when backup copy jobs can use slightly more storage space than the storage threshold you specified. When you initiate a backup copy job, the appliance estimates the amount of space needed for the job, and certain factors can cause it to underestimate. To avoid unexpected charges from your cloud storage provider, it is highly recommended that you develop a policy for managing the amount of backup data that you copy to the cloud in addition to setting a storage threshold.
The storage threshold can be increased or decreased at any time, and changes are applied to all subsequent jobs copying backups to the bucket. If you increase the storage threshold, your storage provider will bill you for the additional storage space you are using.
Note that decreasing the threshold to a value that is less than the amount of space currently used to store backup copies can result in the deletion of backup copies. The next time the job runs, the appliance recognizes that the amount of data on the backup copy target is greater than the storage threshold and invokes your selected behavior: either deleting older backups to free space or failing the job. If you select to delete older backup data to free space for the job, backup copies exceeding the new storage threshold are purged the next time the job runs. Backup groups are still recognized in backup copies, and backups are deleted as a group beginning with the oldest backup copies. If you chose to fail the backup copy job and send an alert, your new backup copies are not written to the cloud and an alert notifies you of this failure.
1 | On the Configure > Appliances page, select your appliance. |
2 | Select the Backup Copy Targets tab. |
3 | Click Add Target > Cloud. |
4 | Enter a Name for the cloud storage. |
5 | Select the storage provider in the Cloud Storage drop-down. |
6 | Enter the bucket’s name in the Storage Path field. |
To create a sub-folder within the bucket, add a forward slash followed by the name of the new folder and another forward slash. For example: If your bucket is named mybackup and you want to create a new sub-folder within that bucket called myfolder, enter: mybackups/myfolder/
7 | Enter the required credentials. These vary by storage provider: |
Note: Be sure to enter the credentials you use to access the particular bucket that you are adding to the appliance. These credentials are not the same as the username and password you use to access your storage provider account.
Provider |
Required Credentials |
Google Cloud Storage Standard or Google Cloud Storage Nearline |
Access Key |
Amazon |
Access Key ID |
Rackspace |
Username API Key |
8 | (Optional) We recommend enabling and setting a storage threshold. This functions as the maximum amount of data the appliance can copy to the cloud. For more information, see Managing the amount of data copied to the cloud. |
9 | Click Save. |
Use this procedure to copy backups to attached disk storage. This target type is supported for UEB on Hyper-V and UEB on VMware appliances only.
Before adding the backup copy target, add an attached disk to the UEB VM or to external storage attached to the UEB hypervisor. To provide redundancy, Unitrends recommends that backup copy storage be on a different datastore or different type of storage than the backup storage. Choose from the following methods to add a disk:
• | Add a virtual disk to a UEB on VMware VM. See one of the following VMware documents for instructions: |
– | vSphere 5.1: Create a Virtual Disk in vSphere Client 5.1 |
– | vSphere 5.5: Create a Virtual Disk in vSphere Client 5.5 |
– | vSphere 6.0: Create a Virtual Disk in vSphere Client 6.0 |
• | Add a virtual disk to a Hyper-V host. Unitrends recommends that you use a VHDX disk and that you add the disk to the SCSI controller. See the following Microsoft documents for instructions: |
– | To create a virtual hard disk |
– | To add a hard disk to a virtual machine |
• | Add a LUN to an external SAN and expose either the entire LUN to the UEB VM or create VMDK or VHD(X) virtual disks on the LUN and expose the disks to the UEB VM. |
• | Create VMDK or VHD(X) disks on an external NAS share and connect the share to the host over the NFS protocol. |
1 | Attach a disk to your Unitrends appliance as described above in Preparing to add a Unitrends appliance backup copy target. |
2 | On the Configure > Appliances page, select your appliance. |
3 | Select the Backup Copy Targets tab. |
4 | Click Add Target > Attached. |
5 | Enter a Name for the storage. |
6 | In the Manage Attached Disks area, select the desired disk from the list of available attached disks and click Add. |
7 | Click Save. |
8 | Create a job to start copying your backups, as described in To create a backup copy job for an attached disk target. |
Use these procedures to store backup copies on a NAS share.
1 | Allocate a share on the NAS. |
2 | On the Configure > Appliances page, select your appliance. |
3 | Select the Backup Copy Targets tab. |
4 | Click Add Target > NAS > CIFS. |
5 | Enter the required CIFS share information and click Save. |
Field |
Description |
---|---|
Name |
Name of the storage. Cannot contain spaces. |
Host | IP address or hostname of the NAS share. |
Port | Contains the default CIFS port. To use a custom port, enter that port number. |
Share Name | Enter the full directory pathname of the NAS share. Do not use leading or ending slashes. |
Username (optional) | If the share is configured for authentication, enter the domain username as user@domain.com, |
Password (optional) | If the share is configured for authentication, enter the password, |
1 | Allocate a share on the NAS. |
2 | On the Configure > Appliances page, select your appliance. |
3 | Select the Backup Copy Targets tab. |
4 | Click Add Target > NAS > NFS. |
5 | Enter the required NFS share information and click Save. |
Field |
Description |
---|---|
Name |
Name of the storage. Cannot contain spaces. |
Host |
IP address or hostname of the NAS share. |
Port |
Contains the default NFS port. To use a custom port, enter that port number. |
Share Name |
Enter the full directory pathname of the NAS share. Do not use leading or ending slashes. |
Username (optional) |
If the share is configured for authentication, enter the domain username as user@domain.com, |
Password (optional) |
If the share is configured for authentication, enter the password. |
Use these procedures to store backup copies on a SAN LUN.
Note: To remove the LUN from the Unitrends appliance, you must go to the SAN manager and indicate that the SAN should no longer use the LUN.
1 | Allocate a LUN on the SAN. |
2 | On the Configure > Appliances page, select your appliance. |
3 | Select the Backup Copy Targets tab. |
4 | Click Add Target > iSCSI. |
5 | Enter a unique Name for the storage device. This name cannot contain spaces. |
6 | Enter the IP address of the SAN storage array in the Host field. |
7 | The default port used for iSCSI communication is 3260. If the LUN is configured to use a different port, enter it in the Port field. |
8 | Click Scan for targets to retrieve a list of targets on the remote storage array, then choose one from the list. |
Notes: If you do not see the LUN in the list, go to your SAN manager and check your LUN configuration by doing the following:
• | Verify that you can see the Unitrends appliance in your SAN manager. |
• | Verify that you have a LUN assigned to the Unitrends appliance with the correct permissions. |
• | Check with your Storage Administrator for more information. |
9 | Click Scan for LUNs and select one from the list. |
Note: If you receive an error indicating CHAP authentication has failed, CHAP has been configured on the target and either CHAP has not been enabled on the Unitrends appliance, or the Unitrends CHAP credentials do not match those of the target.
10 | Click Save. |
1 | Allocate a LUN on the SAN. |
2 | On the Configure > Appliances page, select your appliance. |
3 | Select the Backup Copy Targets tab. |
4 | Click Add Target > FC. |
5 | Enter a unique Name for the storage device. This name cannot contain spaces. |
6 | Enter the IP address of the SAN storage array in the Host field. |
7 | Click Scan for targets to retrieve a list of targets on the remote storage array, then select one in the list. |
8 | Click Scan for LUNs and select one in the list. |
Notes: If you do not see the LUN in the list, go to your SAN manager and check the following:
• | Verify that you can see the Unitrends appliance in your SAN manager. |
• | Verify that you have a LUN assigned to the Unitrends appliance with the correct permissions. |
• | You may need to reboot the Unitrends appliance to enable it to discover the storage device. |
• | Check with your Storage Administrator for more information. |
9 | Click Save. |