Backup - Image Level ProxyHost

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Overview

Supported Backup Types

Image Level ProxyHost Backup Jobs

Backup Considerations

• Metafile Creation

Advanced Backup Options

Overview

Plan your backup jobs for this agent by reviewing the following information:

• For an overview of backup jobs, see Backup Data.
• For a list of supported data types for this agent, see Supported Data Types.
• For information on subclients, see Subclients
  • For information on configuring subclients for this agent, see Subclients - SAN iDataAgents.

Supported Backup Types

This agent supports the following backup types:

• Full Backups
• Incremental Backups
• Synthetic Full Backups
• CXBF Backups
• Non-CXBF Backups

Image Level ProxyHost Backup Jobs

This agent has the following unique functionality.

The Image Level ProxyHost iDataAgent backs up the blocks of complete volumes, and restores them using either Volume Level Restore or File Level Restore. Each backup for the iDataAgent on a Unix platform is either a CXBF backup or a non-CXBF backup.

CXBF Backups

CXBF backups are run on Unix platforms for this agent. To run a CXBF backup, QSnap must be installed on the client and you must configure a CXBF subclient. For more information, see Subclients - SAN iDataAgents. For a step-by-step procedure, see Run a CXBF Backup (Image Level/Image Level ProxyHost).

Non-CXBF Backups

Non-CXBF (Checksum) backups are run on Unix platforms for this agent. To run a non-CXBF (Checksum) backup, you must configure a non-CXBF (Checksum) subclient and also provide a supported snapshot. For more information, see Subclients - SAN iDataAgents. For a step-by-step procedure, see Run a non-CXBF Backup (Image Level/Image Level ProxyHost).

Backup Considerations

Before performing any backup procedures for this agent, review the following information:

• Metafile Creation
  • Selecting the Skip Metafile Creation option in the Advanced Backup Options screen will increase performance but disables the ability to restore data using a File Level restore. This will also apply to any Synthetic Full backups created from such a backup.
  • If File Level restores will never be used for this client, instead of manually selecting the Skip Metafile Creation option for each job, edit the SkipMetaFileCreation registry key to automatically skip metafile creation for all backup jobs.

  • For the Image Level and Image Level ProxyHost iDataAgents, if a backup job is suspended either by the user or the Job Controller during metadata collection, the job will automatically resume from the scan phase.

• Do not modify any data on the secondary volume once the hardware snapshot has completed. In some cases, this could cause data loss or data inconsistence, because any change on the secondary volume will be backed up and this will cause data inconsistence between the primary volume and secondary volume.
• For Solaris, under conditions of heavy I/O, such as is expected during block-level backups and QR volume creation, we recommend that you do not enable the UFS logging option on the client machine.

• Before performing the first full backup of a volume, defragment it. This will ensure that the minimum number of extents will need to be backed up, resulting in better performance and lower storage requirements.
• Although a subclient can contain multiple volumes, you cannot perform a File Level Restore of the subclient, as no metafile is created. To allow metafile creation, enabling File Level Restores, you can create multiple subclients, each containing a unique volume.
• If the backup extent size is changed, the next backup will be converted to a full backup.

• You should configure the next backup after an in-place restore to be a full backup, so as to take advantage of data block copy. Even if only some of the volumes of a subclient were restored, all the volumes in the subclient should be backed up as full. The software does not enforce this, but it is recommended.

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