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Protected assets

Any physical machine, virtual machine, or application you wish to protect is an asset.

Preparing to manage assets

The first step in protecting an asset is adding it to the appliance. Before you begin, determine which features you will configure for your assets and perform any required setup procedures. You can edit an asset at any time to implement a feature. If you are not sure which features you want to use, add the asset without optional features and configure these features later as desired.

Installing the Unitrends agent

Before you can protect a physical asset, you must install the Unitrends agent. (You can also opt to install the agent on virtual machines if you prefer to use asset-level protection.) For most Windows assets, the appliance can push-install the agent when you add the asset. For other physical assets, you must install the Unitrends agent manually before you add the asset.

Agent installation procedures vary by operating system. See the following topics for details:

Operating system Agent install procedure

Microsoft Windows

Installing the Windows agent

Linux

Installing and updating the Linux agent

CentOS

Installing and updating the Linux agent

Debian

Installing and updating the Linux agent

Fedora

Installing and updating the Linux agent

Red Hat

Installing and updating the Linux agent

SUSE

Installing and updating the Linux agent

Ubuntu

Installing and updating the Linux agent

Solaris

Installing and updating the Solaris agent

Novell Netware

Installing and updating the Novell Netware agent

Novell OES Linux

Installing and updating the Novell OES Linux agent

Mac

Installing and updating the Mac agent

AIX

Installing and updating the AIX agent

SCO

Installing and updating the SCO OpenServer agent

UnixWare

Installing and updating the UnixWare agent

HP-UX

Installing and updating the HP-UX agent

Configurable features for protected assets

The following table describes the features that can be configured when adding or editing a protected asset. A description of each feature follows. For procedures used to add or edit an asset, see Managing protected assets.

 

Supported for protected
asset type?

 

 
Feature Physical Virtual Application Configured where?

Asset credentials

Yes Yes Yes

Create the credential, then apply using:

Add Asset
Add Virtual Host
Add NAS
Edit Asset
Edit Virtual Host
Retention settings Yes Yes Yes

Apply using Edit Asset.

Encrypt backups Yes Yes Yes

Configure on Edit Appliance, then apply using:

Add Asset
Edit Asset
Application-aware host-level backups No Yes, VMware only No

Set up using Edit Asset.

Asset credentials

Credentials are used to establish a trust relationship between the Unitrends appliance and its assets. Once you apply a credential to an asset, the appliance can only access the asset using the associated administrative username and password. If the username and password are not valid, access is denied.

Once you have created a credential (as described in Managing protected assets) you can apply the credential when adding or editing the following asset types:

Virtual Hosts - Credentials are required for each vCenter, ESXi, or Hyper-V host asset you add to the appliance. These credentials are required for the Unitrends appliance to run host-level backup and recovery jobs for hosted virtual machines (VMs).
Assets - Credentials are optional for assets (typically physical machines) that you add individually. Credentials are recommended for Windows assets to enable push-installation of the Unitrends agent and agent updates.
NAS assets - Credentials are required only if the NAS share is configured for authentication. Enter NAS credentials while you add the NAS asset.
Hosted virtual machines - When you add a virtual host, any hosted VMs are discovered and display in the asset inventory tree under their virtual host. Credentials are required to enable application-aware protection of VMware Windows VMs and are optional for other VMs.
Hosted applications - When you add an asset, any hosted applications are discovered and display in the asset inventory tree under their host machines. Credentials are required for these applications: Oracle and SharePoint full farm installations. Credentials are optional for other application types. For considerations and requirements, see Application Backups Overview.

Retention settings

The Unitrends appliance ingests new backups and retains them until there is no more backup storage space available. When backup storage is full, the oldest backups are purged to make room for newer ones. However, the Unitrends appliance will not delete the latest backups of any type for a given asset, or any backups with the Never delete backups retention setting.

Retention settings assure that the necessary recovery points are available on your appliance. For long term retention, copy backups to an offsite target as described in Backup copies.

Use retention settings to control how long an asset's backups are retained and the order in which backups are purged. When you add an asset, no retention is set, and the asset's backups are retained as long as possible until the system runs out of backup space (at which point the oldest backups are deleted). By setting retention policies, you can choose to retain backups of certain assets longer than others. To apply retention settings to assets, see Managing retention settings.

Encrypt backups

Use the this option to encrypt an asset's backups using an AES-256 bit algorithm. Before an asset's backups can be encrypted, you must set up encryption on the appliance as described in Encryption. To encrypt an asset's backups, use the applicable Edit Asset procedure in Managing protected assets.

Application-aware host-level backups

For VMware Windows VMs, use this option for application-aware protection of hosted Exchange or SQL simple recovery model applications. This option leverages VSS writers to quiesce data and perform post-backup processing. Log file truncation is handled by VMware application-aware backups as described here:

Application

Log file truncation with VMware application-aware backup

Exchange

Logs are truncated with VMware full and incremental backup.

SQL

Logs are not truncated with VMware application-aware backup. Do the following:

Simple recovery model - No logs created. Use VMware application-aware backups.
Full recovery model - Use agent backups or use VMware application-aware backups with separate transaction log backups to truncate logs. (Schedule periodic transaction log backups using a SQL Maintenance Plan. Do not use SQL Maintenance Plan with agent-based backups.)
Bulk-logged recovery model - Use agent. See Recommendations for bulk-logged recovery model for details.

To set up application-aware protection, apply administrative credentials to the Windows VM and check Enable Application Aware VM Processing, as described in To edit a virtual machine asset.

Once you have set up the Windows VM, application-aware backups are run. If the appliance cannot gain access using these credentials, the backup fails.

To verify that the job was run using the application-aware feature, select the backup in the click the backup in the Backup History report to view associated details. Look for the following in the Output:

appaware YES indicates the VM is configured for application-aware backups.
appaware NO indicates the VM is not configured for application-aware backups.
Failed to connect to host for guest vss operations indicates the appliance attempted application-aware backup, but could not gain access. Check the credentials for errors.