Managing Celerra Data

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Overview

Prerequisites

• Planning
• System Requirements
• License Requirements
• User Credentials for Impersonation

Installation

Configuration

Operations

• Migration Archiving
• Recovery

Moving Celerra Proxy Stub Folder to a New Location

Moving Celerra Stubs to a New Filer

Best Practices

Troubleshooting

Important Considerations

• General Considerations
• Considerations for Creating the Celerra Proxy Stub Subclient
• Considerations for Virtual Data Mover (VDM)

Overview

The Celerra Proxy Stub Subclient feature allows the File Archiver for Windows Agent to archive and recover data residing on an EMC Celerra File Server. A specially configured subclient of the File Archiver for Windows Agent, referred to as a Celerra Proxy Stub Subclient, serves as a proxy to conduct recalls of archived data from the EMC Celerra File Server. The diagram on the right depicts a typical configuration for this feature.

Prerequisites

Consider the following before you begin using this feature:

Planning

Plan an archive and recover strategy as follows:

• Identify the shares that will be archived.
• Define the archive rules.

  To understand the archiving rules available with the software see Migration Archiving - File Archiver for Windows Agent.

• Establish policies to meet strategic Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) goals.

System Requirements

Verify that the computer in which you wish to install the software satisfies the minimum requirements specified in System Requirements - File Archiver for Windows Agent.

License Requirements

The Celerra Proxy Stub Subclient feature requires the following license:

DataArchiver for Files - Network Storage for the capability of File Archiver for Windows to archive and recover data residing EMC Celerra File Server. One license is consumed when a Celerra instance is created. Additional Celerra instances share this license.

For more information on File Archiver for Windows licenses, see License Requirement.

User Credentials for Impersonation

The user account must have read and write permissions on the CIFS share and exported to the network storage file server/proxy. The user account must also have admin access to filer and read/write access to the Windows registry on the proxy computer.

Installation

No additional software is required to configure the Celerra Proxy Stub Subclient. Ensure that the File Archiver for Windows Agent is installed on the Proxy Client computer.

For more information on installing the File Archiver for Windows Agent see Deployment - File Archiver For Windows Agent.

Configuration

The following section provides the high-level steps for configuring the IIS Server, EMC Celerra File Server, creating a Celerra instance and configuring the Celerra Proxy Stub Subclient for archiving and recovery of data residing on an EMC Celerra File Server:

1. Configure the IIS Server with administrator-level privileges on the computer hosting the File Archiver for Windows Agent, or a physically different computer. You do not have to configure the IIS Server if you have the CIFS Address of the Virtual Directory.

   See Configure the IIS Server for Celerra Proxy Stub Subclient Support for step-by-step instructions.

2. Ensure that the Proxy Client Computer is able to access the EMC Celerra File Server with administrator-level privileges.

   See Configure the EMC Celerra File Server for Celerra Proxy Stub Subclient Support for step-by-step instructions.

3. From the CommCell Console, create a Celerra Instance on the Proxy Client computer.

   See Create/Modify a Celerra Instance for step-by-step instructions.

4. From the CommCell Console, configure the Celerra Proxy Stub Subclient on the Proxy Client computer.

   See Celerra Proxy Stub Subclient for step-by-step instructions.

   See also, Considerations for Creating the Celerra Proxy Stub Subclient.

5. From the CommCell Console, Configure Proxy Authentication Credentials in the Proxy Client computer. This user account must have the privileges described in Step 2.

   See Configure Proxy Authentication Credentials for step-by-step instructions.

6. From the CommCell Console, Configure Celerra Proxy Settings in the Proxy Client computer.

   See Configure Celerra Proxy Settings for step-by-step instructions.

Operations

After installing and configuring the required components, data is ready for archiving and recovery.

Migration Archiving

The recovery administrator can schedule migration archiving jobs, similar to scheduling backup jobs for iDataAgents. To ensure that only successfully archived files will be changed into stubs, the migration archiving operation is divided into two phases: archiving and stubbing.

Refer to Migration Archiving for more information on archiving.

Recovery

File Archiver for Windows provides two ways to recover an archived file: by accessing the file with an Open operation (e.g., opening a stub in an application, double-clicking a stub in Windows Explorer) or from the CommCell Console (stand-alone application).

Refer to Recover Archived Data for more information on Recovery operations.

For Celerra recall to work  properly the Celerra folder needs to be added to the Sophos exclusion folder list in case the Sophos antivirus is installed on the File Archiver Agent platform.

GXHSMCACHE cache Folder

For Local File Systems and Celerra instances, a hidden folder (GXHSMCACHE) is created on each volume you are monitoring for stub recovery. The purpose of this folder is to provide a temporary location to open a recovered stub file. When the stub recovery is completed, the file will be deleted from the hidden folder.

Moving Celerra Proxy Stub Folder to a New Location 

When the volume where the proxy stub folder resides runs out of space, user can move the proxy stub folder to a new location in another volume where more space is available. 

Follow the procedure given below to move the Celerra proxy stub folder to a new location:

1. Create a new proxy folder on the new drive.
2. Remove the share from the original proxy folder.
3. Give the new proxy folder the original share name.
4. Change the sub client properties to point to the new proxy folder.
5. Restart DataArchiver services.
6. Run archive job on all associated sub clients whose proxy folder has been changed.

Moving Celerra Stubs to a New Filer

Follow the procedure given below to move the Celerra stubs from an existing Celerra filer to a new Celerra filer where the stubs can be properly recalled.
 

1. Backup the Celerra stubs from the original filer via the Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) agent.
2. Restore the backed up stubs to the new Celerra filer using the NDMP agent.
3. Set up a connection between the new Celerra filer and the existing proxy server on the client computer. Refer to the section "Configure the EMC Celerra File Server for Proxy Stub Subclient Support" for a step-by-step procedure involved in configuring the EMC Celerra File Server for Celerra Proxy Stub Subclient.

Best Practices

Best practices guidelines include the following:

• A CIFS connection is recommended over an HTTP connection as it is easy to configure and it also does not require IIS server configuration.
• Existing HTTP configured stubs can be switched to CIFS configured stubs by deleting all the proxy stubs on the proxy client machine and running an archive job after changing the subclient configuration to CIFS.

• When performing initial setup, it is recommended to first create a test target using the most simplistic configuration. This would include the following:
  • Use a CIFS path, instead of an http path for proxy path.

  For http path:

  • Have the IIS on the same machine in which the File Archiver for Windows Agent is installed.
  • Set up IIS with predefined credentials to access the path and disable the anonymous access. Do not set access credentials for the http access on the EMC Celerra File Server.
  • Set up directory browsing and read access on the path via IIS.
• Do not archive production data using the test configuration. The test configuration should be used as a baseline for more complex configurations. After the test configuration is fully functional, create a more secure configuration for the production data, which would include the following:
  • Disallow anonymous access to the IIS proxy path.
  • Set up access credentials on the EMC Celerra File Server for the IIS http path.
  • Disable directory browsing on the IIS proxy path.

• For File Archiver for Windows on Celerra, file names cannot be longer than 242 bytes. While archiving Celerra Proxy subclient it is required to have file name within 242 bytes as Windows has a 260 byte limitation on file names.

Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting tips for this feature include the following:

• If migration archiving fails in the scan phase or archive phase, verify that a proper username and password have been entered for the EMC Celerra File Server.
• If migration archiving fails in the stubbing phase, verify that the computer on which the File Archiver for Windows Agent resides is properly registered on the EMC Celerra File Server.
• If recalls fail, check that the IIS path is properly registered on the EMC Celerra File Server with required access credentials, if the file server doesn’t have predefined credentials. Check that the IIS path can be accessed by using a browser, and verify that accessing the file via the browser triggers a recall. If a recall is not triggered, check that the drive letter associated with the proxy stub is listed in the WinFSDataMigrator\Drives registry key.
• If dhsm cannot be enabled during configuration of the EMC Celerra File Server, check that the file system is set to CWORD=off. To display information on the file system, enter the following command and switch from the Celerra command prompt: ./nas_fs -info <file_system_name>
  (for example: ./nas_fs -info FS6).

Important Considerations

Consider the following prior to configuring and using this feature:

General Considerations

• Data is always archived on a CIFS share. For recalls from CIFS clients, the volume does not need to be a mixed mode type on the file server. For recalls from NFS clients, the volume must be a mixed mode type on the file server. Refer to vendor documentation for instructions on configuring mixed mode.
• Ensure that the Celerra file system is configured for CWORM=off, since dhsm cannot be enabled on a CWORM file system type.
• CIFS configuration should be used for Celerra instance on Windows 2008 machine, because certain file name patterns may fail to recall when configured for HTTP connection.

Considerations for Creating the Celerra Proxy Stub Subclient

• When you configure subclient content, you can either manually add content or browse the directory tree structure of the EMC Celerra File Server and select the folders/directories you want scanned for archiving. The resulting content will display the folder/directory names similar to the example shown below:

  \\file_server1\dir1
  \\file_server1\dir2

  Note that the depiction of content in the above example varies by File Server and operating system.

• Although one subclient may be sufficient to meet your archiving needs, you can create additional user-defined subclients to distribute the data for archiving. A useful way to distribute subclient content of a File Archiver for Windows client is by directory, as shown in this example:

  User-defined subclient: Subclient-Directory-1
  Content: \\file_server1\dir1

  User-defined subclient: Subclient-Directory-2
  Content: \\file_server1\dir2

  Distributing the client data using subclients in this way can help improve archiving performance by balancing the processing load into logical groupings.

• Subclient-level Archiving Filters are available to exclude specified files/folders/patterns from being scanned for archiving.

  For example, suppose the dirl folder contains a subdirectory called Temp Files that you do not want archived. You can add a subclient filter for the user-defined subclient Subclient-Directory-1 to exclude the Temp Files subdirectory from being scanned for archiving. For more information, see Filters.

• Wildcards and regular expressions are supported by this subclient in the subclient filter.

  For example, the asterisk (*) wildcard can be used in the Exclude these files/folders/patterns field when filtering data using subclient-level archive filters to exclude file patterns and folders/directories from being scanned for archiving. For example:

  • To exclude all files of a certain type, you could enter the following regular expression: *.doc
  • To exclude all files within a directory called "my_folder", you could enter the following regular expression: my_folder/*.*

Considerations for Virtual Data Mover (VDM)

This feature is configured on a Celerra file server and allows the grouping of file systems and CIFS servers into virtual containers. Each VDM has all the required data to support one or more CIFS servers and their file systems.

The VDM servers store their dynamic configuration information in a configuration file system. A VDM can be loaded and unloaded, moved from Data Mover to Data Mover, or imitated to a remote Data Mover as an independent unit.

Refer to the section on Define a Connection between the EMC Celerra Data Mover and the ProxyHost for a command line example, to set up connection between VDM and proxy host.

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