Preparation

In the case of a disaster recovery event, the administrator will need a fresh system to which data may be restored. Depending on the business impacts of being down in the event of a true disaster, end-users may choose to:

     Rely on their Platinum maintenance contract to deliver a replacement system to their disaster recovery site (shipped next business day)

     Purchase a replacement chassis at the time of the disaster under Silver and Gold maintenance contracts and wait 2 weeks (Silver) or 3-5 business days (Gold) for delivery of a new system to their disaster recovery site

     Purchase a standby, spare system chassis from Unitrends to have onsite in their disaster recovery center for the ultimate recovery scenario.

     For UEB systems only, perform DR to a CIFS or NFS-configured NAS.

     For replicating systems, perform hot/hot restore from the replication target to a new, directly attached system. The new system can then be shipped to the DR site.

Next, to prepare your disaster recovery strategy, keep the following in mind:

     Archive data at regular intervals and store disks in a safe location. (Archive to disk is not available for SFF-RecoveryOS).

     Replicate data directly to an off-site system at regular intervals.

Step 1: A complete disaster recovery strategy must include a record of certain information. You will need this information to restore protected systems in the event of disaster. Once the Unitrends system has been configured and the appropriate clients registered, the following information should be recorded so it can be accessed in the event of a system failure.

Asset #:__________________________________________

Software Serial #:__________________________________

User String:_______________________________________

Feature String_____________________________________

License Key:_______________________________________

Note: License information can be found by accessing Settings > System, Updates, and Licensing > License through the Administrator Interface.

Step 2: Decide whether backups will be archived or replicated.

Step 3: Set up the Unitrends system for replication, archiving, or both. Depending on the type of protection you settle on, see the Archiving Overview or Replication chapters for more information.

Step 4: Determine which clients will be protected. The steps for registering clients are covered in About adding clients.

Step 5: Create bare metal media for each of the registered clients. It is typically recommended that every client have a crash recovery media created as soon as it is set up, and then bare metal backups should be performed on a monthly basis, or, whenever major hardware or software changes are made to the client. For detailed information on this procedure, see the Bare Metal Protection Overview chapter.

Step 6: Create schedules for running your desired backups. Go to the Backups Overview chapter for instructions on setting up backup schedules.