About this Guide
This guide describes how to administer Unitrends backup and recovery solutions. Before running the procedures in this guide, you must deploy your appliance and configure network settings. For details, see Getting started with your Unitrends appliance.
This guide is intended for administrators and technical personnel responsible for configuring and administering Unitrends appliances, and assumes intermediate to advanced computer skills. Procedures and considerations in this guide follow best practices and requirements for the successful administration and configuration of your Unitrends backup and recovery solution.
Procedures in this guide cover supported features for Recovery Series, Recovery MAX/MAXS, and ION/ION+ appliances, and Unitrends Backup editions.
Supported features vary by appliance type and edition. To view supported features for your appliance, consult the following resources at Unitrends.com:
● Unitrends Recovery Series and Recovery Series MAX
● ION and ION+ Appliance Models
All procedures are run from the appliance UI, unless otherwise specified. Elements in the UI are dynamic and display according to the user's role, appliance edition, environment, and type of data. For example:
● A user with the manage role and backup operator access level cannot run a recovery job. The Recover tab in the UI is disabled for this user.
● Adding backup storage does not apply to Recovery Series, Recovery MAX, and ION/ION+ appliances. The Add Storage option does not display in the Recovery Series, Recovery MAX, and ION/ION+ UIs.
● Citrix XenServer host-level backups are not supported on Unitrends Backup on Hyper-V appliances. XenServer does not display in the list of hypervisors in the Add Virtual Host dialog.
Access the UI with a Firefox or Chrome Internet browser. Internet Explorer is not supported.

This guide provides conceptual, procedural, and referential information for the administration of your Unitrends appliance. Unitrends recommends familiarizing yourself with this information before configuring and operating your appliance.
Feature overviews include considerations, requirements, and prerequisite information to assist in planning an effective protection strategy.
Procedures provides step-by-step instructions for performing backup and recovery operations. Instructions adhere to best practices for successful configuration and administration of your Unitrends data protection and recovery solution.
● See Backup Administration and Procedures for instructions on performing, monitoring, and managing backup and backup copy jobs.
● Recovery procedures vary by backup type. For a description of each type, see Types of data protected. For recovery procedures, see these chapters:
● Recovering Host-level Backups
● Recovering File-level Backups
● Recovering Windows Image-level Backups
● Recovering Application Backups
● Cross-references and links throughout this guide provide access to additional sources of information and assistance.

This guide uses some special typographical effects to convey certain information. Review the following for additional information:
Typographical convention | Description |
---|---|
Bold |
Indicates one of the following: ● Items you select in the UI, such as menu commands. ● Text you enter in fields in the UI. |
Courier |
Indicates one of the following: ● Text you enter via the command line, outside of the UI. ● Output displayed by a system console, outside of the UI. |
# |
Sample prompt displayed before text you enter via the command-line, outside of the UI. |
Greater-than symbol (>) | Separates sequential commands that you select or click in the UI. |
Blue text |
Indicates one of the following: ● Link to the Unitrends website ● Link to an external website ● Cross reference to another section in this guide ● Link to a Unitrends Knowledge Base article |

The following table describes the terms and acronyms commonly used in this document.
Term | Definition |
---|---|
Added disk |
Applies to Unitrends Backup virtual appliances only. Virtual disk storage created on the Unitrends Backup VM's hypervisor that is added to the appliance to store backups. Also called attached disk storage. |
Agent |
Unitrends software installed on machines you wish to protect with file-level or Windows image-level backups. |
Agent-based asset |
Physical or virtual machine that is protected by installing a Unitrends agent and running file-level or Windows image-level backups. |
Appliance |
The Unitrends system that backs up and recovers data. Appliance can refer to: ● A physical Recovery Series, Recovery MAX, or ION/ION+ model. Consists of Unitrends hardware, Unitrends software, and additional configuration settings. ● A Unitrends Backup system deployed as a virtual machine to one of the following environments: VMware, Hyper-V, Nutanix AHV, Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Azure, or Amazon Web Services. Consists of the Unitrends Backup VM, Unitrends software, attached storage, and additional configuration settings. |
Application backup |
Backup that captures an application’s structure and data to ensure database consistency. You must install a Unitrends agent on the host asset to run application backups. |
Asset |
Physical and virtual machines, databases, and applications protected by the Unitrends appliance. Equivalent to the legacy term client. NOTE The appliance automatically detects the virtual machines and applications on the virtual hosts and physical assets you add to the appliance. |
Backup copy |
Copy of a backup that is stored off-site. You can copy your backups to the following types of targets: Unitrends Cloud, a secondary Unitrends appliance, Cloud storage (managed by Amazon, AWS, Google, or Rackspace), disks, NAS devices, and other media. IMPORTANT Unitrends recommends having a second copy of your backups on one of these targets in order to recover from a disaster. Backup copies that reside in the Unitrends Cloud or on a secondary Unitrends appliance are known as hot backup copies. Backup copies that reside on the other target types are known as cold backup copies. Equivalent to these legacy terms: ● Replication for hot backup copy to the Unitrends Cloud or to another Unitrends appliance. ● Archiving for cold backup copies to other external media. |
Backup group |
The appliance organizes backups into groups to manage dependencies. A backup group contains a full backup and any subsequent incrementals and differentials. A backup group always starts with a full backup. |
Backup mode |
A backup's mode determines what data to include in the backup. Example modes: full, incremental, and differential. |
Backup strategy |
Combination of backups, backup copies, and other Unitrends features used to protect assets. |
Backup type |
Determined by the backup method used to create the backup. Examples: file-level, host-level, application. |
Dashboard |
A summary of the appliance’s status with topic-specific tiles that capture at-a-glance data for various aspects of the appliance. |
Deduplication |
Specialized data compression technique that eliminates duplicate data blocks. |
External storage |
Applies to backup storage for Unitrends Backup appliances deployed on VMware, Hyper-V, Nutanix AHV, and Citrix XenServer only. SAN or NAS storage that is connected directly to the Unitrends Backup VM over the iSCSI, CIFS, or NFS protocol. NOTES ● External backup storage is supported on Unitrends virtual appliances only. You cannot use external backup storage on a physical Recovery Series, Recovery MAX, or ION/ION+ appliance. ● SAN or NAS storage can also be used to store backup copies. This is supported on Recovery Series, Recovery MAX, and Unitrends Backup appliances. |
File-level backup (formerly known as asset-level backup) |
Backup that protects an asset's file system and operating system. You must install a Unitrends agent on the asset to run a file-level backup. (For Windows assets, you can opt to use file-level backups, image-level backups, or both backup types.) |
Global menu |
Toolbar across the top of the user interface that includes several menus to quickly edit global options, perform administrative tasks, and access additional resources. |
Host-level backup |
Backup that protects a virtual machine by leveraging hypervisor snapshots. You do not need to install a Unitrends agent on a VM to run host-level backups. |
Image-level backup (Windows only) |
Backup that protects a Windows asset at the disk and volume level. You must install a Unitrends agent on the asset to run an image-level backup. (You can opt to protect a Windows asset with file-level backups, image-level backups, or both backup types.) |
Initial backup storage |
Applies to Unitrends Backup virtual appliances only. Storage you attach to the Unitrends Backup VM that is used to store appliance configuration settings and backups. The initial backup storage must be at least 200GB in size. |
Initial disk |
Applies to Unitrends Backup virtual appliances only. 100GB disk used to create the Unitrends Backup VM. While deploying the virtual appliance, you select storage on the virtual host server that the installer uses to create this disk. |
Instant Recovery (IR) |
Process that recovers a failed or corrupted virtual machine in minutes. |
iSeries backup |
A backup that protects an asset's filesystem by leveraging native iSeries backup operations. You do not install an agent on the iSeries asset. |
Job |
Procedures performed to protect assets. Multiple job types exist, all of which can be monitored from the Active Jobs tile while in progress. |
NAS backup |
Backup that protects data stored on a NAS device. You do not install an agent on the NAS asset. |
Protected asset |
Any physical machine, virtual machine, or application protected with Unitrends backups. Equivalent to the legacy term client. |
Recovery object |
Disk image created on the backup appliance during instant recovery or during file-level recovery from a host-level backup. |
Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs) |
Desired number of recovery points. |
Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) |
Desired speed of recovery. |
Replica |
Virtualized copy of an asset that can immediately assume the role of that asset in case of failure. Supported for VMware virtual machines and Windows machines. |
Resources |
Amount of space, bandwidth, disk space, memory, etc, consumed by the job or object. |
SLA Policy Automation |
Unitrends feature that enables you to quickly implement a protection strategy that aligns with your business continuity plan. Simply create an SLA policy and the appliance automatically creates the backup and backup copy jobs needed for the RPO and retention settings you specified. |
System load |
Amount of resources being used by the system at any given time. |
Tile |
Topic-based sections of the dashboard. |
Type |
Description of both a function (backup, recover) and the storage media, such as attached virtual disk. For example, an attached disk configured as backup storage. |
Unitrends Backup VM |
Applies to Unitrends Backup virtual appliances only. Virtual machine created by deploying Unitrends Backup to your virtual host server. |
Virtual host | Host on which virtual machine assets reside. Also called a hypervisor. |
VM replica |
A virtual machine replica of a VM that is kept up-to-date by applying backups of the original VM as they run. The replica is a cold, stand-by VM that you can quickly bring online to assume the role of the original VM. |
Windows replica |
A virtual machine replica of a Windows asset that is kept up-to-date by applying backups of the original asset as they run. The replica is a cold, stand-by VM that you can quickly bring online to assume the role of the original Windows asset. (The Windows replica feature was formerly known as Windows instant recovery.) |