Getting Started with Windows Image-level Protection

Beta release 10.3.0 introduces image-level protection for Windows assets. With image-level protection, Windows assets are backed up at the disk and volume level. Image-level protection yields faster backup performance than file-level protection, especially for servers that have many small files. For a comparison of image-level and file-level protection, see Features of Windows image-level and file-level protection.

For details on using this feature, see Setting up Windows image-level protection.

Setting up Windows image-level protection

To start protecting your Windows assets with image-level backups:

Step 1: Review the Requirements and considerations for Windows image-level protection
Step 2: Review the Beta restrictions and known issues
Step 3: Add the Windows asset
Step 4: (Optional) Edit asset retention settings

Note:  Retention can also be managed via the new long-term data management feature, which is the default retention scheme for new 10.3.0 Beta appliances. For details, see

Step 5: Run image-level backups
Step 6: Next Steps

Requirements and considerations for Windows image-level protection

Review the information in these topics before implementing Windows image-level protection:

Best practices and considerations for Windows image-level protection

Follow these best practices to protect your Windows assets with image-level backups:

Adhere to Microsoft best practices.
Full and incremental backups are supported for image-level backups.
A new full backup is required if the disk or volume configuration has changed since the last backup. This includes any change to the number, size, or properties of the disks or to the number, size, or properties of the volumes on a disk.

If the disk or volume configuration has changed since the last backup, the next incremental fails. After this failure, the appliance promotes the next scheduled backup to a full (or displays a message indicating a full is required if an on-demand incremental is attempted). Once a full backup succeeds, subsequent incrementals run as scheduled.

In some cases, you may want or need to use file-level backups. To protect a Windows asset with both image-level and file-level backups, ensure that the image-level and file-level jobs do not overlap. Running both simultaneously may lead to undesirable results. See Features of Windows image-level and file-level protection for a comparison of these backup methods.

Requirements for Windows image-level protection

The following requirements must be met for image-level protection of Windows assets:

Item

Description

Unitrends appliance

These requirements apply to the Unitrends backup appliance:

The appliance must be running the 10.3.0 Beta release. (For install procedures, see Deploy or upgrade appliances.)
Port 443 must be open inbound to the appliance from the protected Windows asset for the TCP protocol.

Windows agent

The Windows asset must be running Unitrends agent version 10.3.0 with the Volume CBT driver. During agent installation, you have the option to install the Volume CBT driver. The Volume CBT driver is needed to run image-level incremental backups. After you install the Windows agent and Volume CBT driver, you must reboot the Windows asset to enable the driver. For details, see To install the 10.3.0 Windows agent.

Note:  If the Volume CBT driver has not been installed or has not been enabled, image-level incrementals are not supported. Any scheduled incremental is automatically promoted to a full backup. If you attempt to run an on-demand incremental, you receive a message indicating that only full backups are supported.

Windows asset

See these rows below for Windows requirements:

Note:  Additional Windows requirements apply for instant recovery. For details, see Windows asset requirements for IR.

Operating systems
Firmware interface type
Disk partition type
File system Configuration
Unsupported Windows features

Operating systems

The operating systems listed below are supported. (Additional version limitations apply. See the Compatibility and Interoperability Matrix for details.)

Supported client operating systems:

Windows 7 with SP1, 64-bit only
Windows 8, 64-bit only
Windows 8.1, 64-bit only
Windows 10, 64-bit only

Supported server operating systems:

Windows 2008 R2 with SP1, 64-bit only
Windows 2012, 64-bit only
Windows 2012 R2, 64-bit only
Windows 2016, 64-bit only

Firmware interface type

Image-level protection is supported for BIOS- and UEFI-based assets.

 

Disk partition type

Image-level protection is supported for GUID Partition Table (GPT) partitions and Master Boot Record (MBR) primary partitions. (MBR extended partitions will be supported in a future release.)

File system Configuration

Image-level protection is supported for these file systems: NTFS, FAT, FAT32, exFAT, and ReFS.

Note:  Due to a Microsoft limitation, VSS snapshots cannot be taken of these volumes: FAT, FAT32, and exFAT. Backups of these volumes may contain data that is not in a consistent state if data changes during the backup job.

Unsupported Windows features

Image-level protection is not supported for the following features. Use file-level protection instead:

Windows Storage Spaces
Cluster shared volumes (CSVs)
Windows Server Failover Clusters (WSFCs)
Domain controllers
Active Directory servers – Active Directory (AD) database and SYSVOL backups are included with the system state in Windows file-level backups.
Distributed File System environments – Distributed File System (DFS) Namespaces and DFS Replication offer high-available access to geographically dispersed files. Because of the replication and syncing operations in DFS environments, you must set up the Windows machine in accordance with Microsoft best practices to ensure database consistency. If all Microsoft considerations are not addressed, backup and restore of the Windows machine may yield undesired results. If you prefer not to research these best practices, protect the machine by running file-level backups instead.

Beta restrictions and known issues

The following limitations and known issues apply to this Beta release:

Beta Limitation

Description

Agent push installation

Push installation of the Unitrends Windows agent is not supported. You must install the Windows agent manually, as described in To install the 10.3.0 Windows agent.

Hyper-V CBT driver installation

There is a known issue where the Hyper-V CBT driver cannot be installed on Hyper-V servers that are running a pre-10.1.0-3 agent. In this case, you must manually uninstall the older Windows agent before installing the 10.3.0 agent. For details, see To uninstall the Windows agent.

Backup schedules

The following are not supported when creating image-level backup schedules:

Excluding volumes from backup.
Pre- and post- backup commands and other options on the Advanced tab.
The Custom backup mode.

Recovering files from image-level backups

You must log in to the backup appliance directly to recover files. Logging in to an appliance that is managing the backup appliance is not supported.

Appliance disaster recovery

Performing appliance disaster recovery from an image-level backup copy is not supported in this Beta release.

Hot backup copy to the Unitrends Cloud

Important!  If you are currently copying backups to the Unitrends Cloud in your production environment, do not upgrade the source backup appliance to the Beta 10.3.0 release. Copying backups to the production Unitrends Cloud is not supported for source appliances running the Beta 10.3.0 release.

Backup copy to the Unitrends Cloud is supported for newly configured Beta Cloud targets only. To use this feature, contact Unitrends Support for assistance.

The following requirements and considerations apply:

The Beta Cloud target is available during the Beta trial period only. After the Beta trial ends, any backups copied to the Unitrends Cloud are removed and are no longer accessible.
If you are currently copying backups to the Unitrends Cloud in your production environment, you must use a different source backup appliance for the Beta trial. Either deploy a new Unitrends Backup virtual appliance or upgrade an existing appliance that is not yet copying backups to the Unitrends Cloud. (You cannot use any appliance that is already copying backups to the production Unitrends Cloud.)

Hot backup copy to another Unitrends appliance

Hot backup copy to your own Unitrends target appliance is supported. To use this feature, deploy or upgrade two Unitrends Backup appliances (as described in Deploy or upgrade appliances). Use one to run image-level backups and the other as the backup copy target appliance. To configure the hot backup copy target, see this topic in the Administrator Guide for Recovery Series, Recovery MAX, and Unitrends Backup: Adding a Unitrends appliance backup copy target.

SLA policies

SLA policies are not supported for this Beta release. You must manually create backup schedules for image-level backups.

Locally mounted VHD/VHDX files

Image-level protection is not supported for VHD or VHDX files that are mounted as local volumes. For details, see VHD or VHDX files that are mounted as local volumes.

Read-only volumes

Image-level protection is not supported for read-only volumes.

Offline disks

Offline disks are included in image-level backups.

Disk configuration

Image-level protection is supported for Windows machines configured with basic disks only.

MBR extended partitions

Master Boot Record (MBR) extended partitions are not supported. (MBR primary partitions are supported.)

Add the Windows asset

To protect a Windows machine, it must be added as an agent-based asset to the Unitrends backup appliance. If you have already added the Windows assets, proceed to Run image-level backups.

6 (If needed) For Exchange assets, additional steps are needed before you can run Exchange application backups. See To allow Exchange application backups for details.
7 (If needed) For Hyper-V assets, additional steps are needed to discover hosted virtual machines and to run Windows image-level backups. See To sync inventory for details.

Edit asset retention settings

Retention settings

Retention settings are used to control how long backups are retained on the appliance. See the table below for a description of each setting. See To apply retention settings to one asset to apply settings to individual assets.

Note:  Retention can also be managed via the new long-term data management feature, which is the default retention scheme for new 10.3.0 Beta appliances. For details, see

Run image-level backups

Use this procedure to create an image-level backup job.

Next Steps

Once you have created image-level backup jobs, you can opt to do any of the following:

Copy image-level backups to a secondary target. For details, see Creating backup copy jobs.
Recover files from image-level backups. For details, see Recovering files from Windows image-level backups.
Set up instant recovery to recover a failed or corrupted Windows machine and access it in minutes. For details, see Instant recovery of Windows image-level backups.
Recover the entire Windows asset in the event of a disaster. For details, see Unified bare metal recovery of image-level backups.