Unitrends Recovery-Series and UEB appliances provide comprehensive data protection for a wide range of operating systems, applications, hypervisors, and NAS devices. Anything protected by Unitrends is referred to as a protected asset. For a complete list of assets your appliance can protect, see the Unitrends Compatibility and Interoperability Matrix on our website.
All data protection strategies begin with local backups that reside on your appliance. Backups are duplicates of your data, and can be performed in several modes. Depending on the mode you specify, they capture all data for an asset, or a subset of data that has changed since the last backup. Each backup functions as a recovery point for the protected asset. After you've backed up your assets, you can recover individual files, databases, file systems, entire machines, or use the instant recovery features to recover critical machines in minutes.
Customize your backup strategy to meet your recovery point objectives (RPOs) and recovery time objectives (RTOs). RPOs and RTOs refer to the maximum amount of data loss and downtime that you can tolerate. For example, if you can tolerate losing a day’s worth of data, your RPO is one day. If you can tolerate only 30 minutes of downtime, your RTO is 30 minutes . RPOs and RTOs can vary per asset, and Unitrends offers different backup and recovery options to ensure that you meet these goals.
To meet your RPOs, use custom schedules to create backups at the desired frequency. To meet your RTOs, use retention policies to control the number of recovery points available on your appliance and instant recovery to quickly spin up critical machines. Use backup copies stored on an offiste target for long-term retention and disaster recovery.
This chapter introduces you to Unitrends protection, providing an overview to help you determine which features will work best for your environment and your RTOs/RPOs. For details about the protection options described here and instructions for using them, see the other applicable sections of this guide.
These key components of Unitrends data protection are described in the remainder of this chapter:
• | Types of data protected |
• | Backups |
• | Backup copies |
• | Recovery
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Data is protected using asset-level, host-level, or application backups:
• | An asset-level backup protects an asset's file system and operating system. You must install a Unitrends agent on the asset for asset-level protection. |
• | A host-level backup uses hypervisor snapshots to protect virtual machines. You do not need to install a Unitrends agent on hosted VMs. |
• | Application backups capture an application’s structure and data to ensure database consistency. You must install a Unitrends agent on the host server for application protection. |
Physical assets are protected with asset-level backups and hosted applications are protected with application backups.
For virtual assets, you can choose host-level or asset-level protection. Host-level backups capture files, application data, and virtual hardware. With asset-level protection, the appliance treats your VM as a physical asset to run asset-level and application backups.
The table below compares the backup options for virtual assets. Host-level backups are recommended in most cases, but there are VMs for which you will want or need to use asset-level protection. For considerations specific to your environment, see Protecting VMware virtual machines at the asset level and Protecting Hyper-V virtual machines at the asset level to determine which approach to take.
Host-level protection |
Asset-level protection |
Add the virtual host to your appliance and it detects all the VMs on the host. It is not necessary to install agents on VMs or add VMs to the appliance individually. This greatly simplifies protecting large virtual environments. |
You must install agents on the VMs and add each one to the appliance individually. |
Backups capture all data on the VMs. You can exclude entire disks (VMware only), but you cannot exclude files, directories, or volumes. |
You can choose to protect all of the asset’s data or select only particular files, directories, or volumes. |
You can recover virtual machines in minutes using the VM instant recovery feature. |
You can recover Windows machines in minutes using the Windows instant recovery feature. |
You can recover individual files from backups for VMs running Windows or Linux. |
You can recovery individual files from backups for any supported operating system. You can recover individual items from application databases. |