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Remote Backup is a light-weight solution to maintain application and file system data in a remote backup location. Remote Backup uses an ingenious design to identify the precise changes to the data protected on the source, and transfers only the modified data to the remote backup. This reduces the data transferred over the network enabling faster backup cycles. Remote backup operations can be performed at any desired time, providing control on the use of network. The schedulable backup operation allows you to strategize network usage and this significantly benefits the system performance.
Application data can be protected in a consistent state, and restored to point-in-time upon recovery. See Application Integration for more details. Remote Backup solution is best suited for protecting highly dynamic application data without compromising system performance. Source data can be compressed and encrypted during the backup for efficiency and data security. Remote Backup also verifies the integrity of data during the transfer, providing additional security.
The backup data on the destination can be moved to secondary storage, and still restored back to the source when required.
The backup data on the destination also supports offline mining for Active Directory and Exchange data. See Exchange Offline Mining and Active Directory Offline Mining for details on offline mining.
Data protection operations for the data types listed below are supported for Remote Backup.
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Common scenarios for setting up the Remote Backup solution are illustrated below, but these by no means illustrate all of the ways in which it can be configured.
Remote Backup from one Source computer to one Destination computer:
This is the most fundamental configuration for data replication. A single computer on the LAN or WAN has its data replicated to another computer, either local or remote. This provides protection of the source computer against catastrophic failure of the computer itself. |
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Fan-In Configurations: Remote Backup from multiple Source computers to a single Destination computer:
In a Fan-In configuration, multiple computers on the LAN or WAN have their data replicated to a single computer, either local or remote. This provides protection of all of the source computers against catastrophic failure, while maximizing the use of resources by directing all the data to a single destination computer. On Windows, most of the configuration of replication and Recovery Point options can be accomplished from the Fan-In tab of the Agent Properties on the destination computer, and these settings are automatically applied to all the source computer. On UNIX, replication and Recovery Point options must be configured on each source computer. ScalabilityAlthough the scalability of a Fan-In setup can vary based on network and system resources, it is recommended that each Fan-In setup contains no more than 100 source clients. For maximum performance and robustness, the total number of Replication Pairs configured for the same source volume should be kept to a minimum. If multiple Replication Pairs must be configured for the same source volume, the recommended upper limit is five. |
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Fan-Out Configurations: Remote Backup from one Source computer to multiple Destination computers:
This configuration for data replication, referred to as "Fan-Out", adds significantly to the protection afforded to the source computer, because of the redundancy. A single computer on the LAN or WAN has its data replicated to multiple computers, any of which can be either local or remote. This provides protection against catastrophic failure of an entire site, as well as the source computer itself. |
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The following snapshots engines are supported for creating snapshots on the destination computers in the Remote Backup configuration:
This feature requires a Feature License to be available in the CommServe® Server.
Review general license requirements included in License Administration. Also, View All Licenses provides step-by-step instructions on how to view the license information.
Install the latest version of ContinuousDataReplicator on the source and destination computers. See Deployment - ContinuousDataReplicator for the installation procedure. Review System Requirements - Continuous Data Replicator for supported platforms. No special configuration is required during the installation.
Application data is automatically configured by discovering directories that should be backed up (logs, databases, etc.) to protect supported applications. See Application - Support for the list of applications supported for Remote Backup. Supported app
For applications that are not supported, data consistency in the backup can be achieved quiesced during the backup to achieve consistence point-in-time data for Backup.
Integrated Applications:
Integrate the applications at the agent level and use the Add App feature to add Replication Pairs containing application data. See Application - Support for supported applications.
Non-Integrated Applications:
For applications that are not natively supported, customized user-defined scripts can be used to quiesce the applications during backup.
For applications that use VSS writers, you can engage all VSS writers to capture data in a consistent state during the backup. Use the Engage All VSS Writers option in the Manage Pairs dialog box. Also, if there are multiple applications in the source volume and the data traffic on those applications would affect the data capture for backup, then using this option would engage all the VSS writers and enable data capture.
You can configure network throttling options at the Agent level, in the Operational Parameters tab of the agent Properties screen. See Configure Network Bandwidth Throttling for instructions.
The following can be configured on the Source computer:
On Windows, the setting for Throttling Amount will apply to each pipeline engaged in replication activity, not the aggregate of all pipelines for all Replication Pairs on the computer. With respect to the number of pipelines that will be active at any one time, review the following based on an example of having a Throttling Amount setting of 10Mbps:
On UNIX, the setting for Throttling Amount will apply to the aggregate of all pipelines for all Replication Pairs on the computer. With respect to the number of pipelines that will be active at any one time, review the following based on an example of having a Throttling Amount setting of 30Mbps:
If your destination computer is serving that function for multiple source computer, you may need to set this limit on each of the source computers, such that the destination computer has sufficient time for log replay from all source computers. Note that the Throttling Amount must be specified first, before you can create Bandwidth Throttling Rules (see next item.)
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Create a Replication Set on the source computer with the Replication Type - Remote Backup. See Create a Replication Set for step-by-step instructions. See Replication Set for more discussions on Replication Sets.
Consider the following options while creating the Replication Set:
Files that are in the destination directory, but not the source directory, are orphan files. You can choose to ignore, log, or delete such files that are identified in the destination path; these settings are configured in the Orphan Files tab of the Replication Set Properties.
To configure Orphan File settings, see Configure Orphan File Processing for step-by-step instructions.
Create Replication Pairs to the replication sets. See Add or Edit a Replication Pair for step-by-step instructions to add the replication pairs. See Replication Pair for more details.
Replication Pairs are designated set of data on the source computer configured for backup. Replication pairs can contain application data and/or file system data. If your Replication Pair contain application data, then consider the following options while creating the Replication Pairs:
Replication Policies provide a template for replication sets. If you have a multiple Replication Sets with common configurations, you might want to use create a Replication policy, and use the policy to create the Replication Sets. See Replication Policy for more details.
The following operations can be performed using Remote Backup.
Remote Backup operations are performed at the Replication Set level. The contents of all the Replication Pairs in the Replication Set are backed up to the destination computer.
Remote Backup supports two types of backup operations, Full and Incremental. For more information on Full Backup, see Full Backups. For more information on Incremental Backup, see Incremental Backups.
In cases where the initial backup involves transferring large amounts of data from the Source computer to the Destination computer, and the network connection does have the bandwidth to transfer the data, you can seed the initial data using alternative data transfer methods. Once the initial data transfer is complete, you can continue with the traditional backup for subsequent incremental backups. See Transfer Data When a Full Backup Cannot be Performed for step-by-step instructions.
Recovery Points are snapshots (point-in-time copy) of the backup data on the destination computers. Recovery Points can be created, and backed up, affording additional data protection options for recovery of your data. In addition, Recovery Points can be mounted, and for Windows can also be shared, and thus made available to users on the network.
Recovery Point creation must be configured at the Replication Set level. See Configure CDR Recovery Points for instructions.
The following types of Recovery Points can be created for Remote Backup operations:
A Consistent Recovery Point defines a point-in-time where data is in a consistent state on the source computer, ensuring the data can be restored to that point-in-time; this is more useful for application data than for file system data.
Remote Backup provides the following options to create consistent Recovery Points in the destination .
Fan-In Recovery Points consist of snapshots created on the destination computer (configured in Fan-In setup) by the specified snapshot engine, without any reference to the state of the source computer; this is suitable for file system data.
Recovery points can be backed for additional protection, and more data recovery options. See Backups of Recovery Points complete details.
Recovery Points can be mounted, and for Windows can also be shared, and thus made available to users on the network. See Mounting or Sharing Recovery Point Snapshots for complete details.
You can browse the destination to view the Live Copy of backup data, and to view the Recovery Points that have been created for the Replication Set(s). The browse option can be invoked from the Client, Agent, Replication Set, or application iDataAgent level; see Browse Data for the complete set of browse options available at each level.
Data backed up from the source computer to the destination computer can be recovered back using one of the following Recovery Scenarios:
A Copyback operation copies the contents of a destination path (Live Copy) or Recovery Point to a specified recovery host and recovery path. This is true for both file system data, as well as application data. The Live Copy or multiple Recovery Points can be copied back by selecting them during the browse, and then specifying the destination for the copyback operation. Copyback can be performed from any of the levels described in Browse Data. See Copyback for more details.
Use the following procedures to copy back from the destination computers:
Recovery Points can be mounted on the destination computer, or for Windows they can also be shared from the destination computer, and thus made available to users on the network. For more information, see Mounting or Sharing Recovery Point Snapshots.
For step-by-step procedures, see the following:
The backup of Recovery Points or Consistent Recovery Points is performed using the Windows File System iDataAgent, which is also used to perform restore operations. For more information about restoring from a backup, see Restore Data - Windows File Systems.
See Job Management for more information on monitoring backup jobs from the Job Controller.
Job History allows you to view more detailed information about a job once it has completed. The following job histories are available for Remote Backup:
The Job Summary Report allows you to review the details of the Remote Backup jobs performed on this client. See Job Summary Report for more details and access information.
If you wish to change an existing ContinuousDataReplicator setup to use Remote Backup, see Switch from Continuous Replication to Remote Backup.
Review the following best practices when using the Remote Backup solution:
For Windows, the nDoNotReplicateACLs registry key can be used to disable the replication of the security security stream of files. This stream includes user and group access control list (ACL) settings for file access. If this registry key is not present, ACLs will be replicated.