About adding backup storage to a Unitrends Backup appliance

To add more backup storage to your Unitrends Backup appliance, Unitrends recommends adding storage in the same manner as the initial backup storage:

Note:   These procedures apply to adding add more storage to your Unitrends Backup appliance. Additional requirements and considerations apply to creating the initial backup storage. If you have not yet deployed the appliance and created the initial backup storage, follow the procedures in the applicable deployment guide instead. For links to the deployment guides, see About this Guide.

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If you used virtual attached disk storage, Unitrends recommends using the host to add virtual disks to the Unitrends Backup VM. Once the disks are added to the VM, use the Unitrends Backup UI to expand the initial backup storage to include these new disks. See Procedures for adding attached disk backup storage for details.

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If a NAS share was attached to the host , we recommend adding another share in the same manner. Then go to the host and add new virtual disks to the Unitrends Backup VM using storage on the share you added. Once the disks are added to the VM, use the Unitrends Backup UI to expand the initial backup storage to include these new disks. See Procedures for adding attached disk backup storage for details.

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If a SAN LUN was connected to the host, we recommend adding another LUN in the same manner. Then go to the host and add new virtual disks to the Unitrends Backup VM using storage on the LUN you added. Once the disks are added to the VM, use the Unitrends Backup UI to expand the initial backup storage to include these new disks. See Procedures for adding attached disk backup storage for details.

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If a SAN or NAS was directly attached to the Unitrends Backup appliance, expanding the initial backup storage is not supported. Instead, LUNs or shares can be added to the appliance as separate storage areas. See Procedures for adding external storage for details.

Additional recommendations

Review the following recommendations before adding storage:

Warning!     Unitrends strongly recommends that all storage is either direct attached storage (DAS, internal to the hypervisor) or resides on one external storage array. If you configure storage across multiple storage arrays and one becomes unavailable, all backup data is corrupted, resulting in total data loss.

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As you add storage, be sure to add resources to the Unitrends Backup virtual machine, such as CPU and memory.

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Storage should be dedicated to the Unitrends Backup VM and not shared by other virtual machines, applications, etc.

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If you are using external SAN or NAS storage, the shares or LUNs used by the Unitrends Backup VM should be dedicated to that Unitrends Backup VM.

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The Unitrends Backup VM can be deployed on a host in a cluster configuration and can use shared storage. However, in this configuration, the Unitrends Backup VM should use a dedicated NAS share or SAN LUN.

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For best performance with SAN storage, use a thickly provisioned LUN and either a thick provisioned eager zeroed VMDK or a fixed size VHD(X). (For XenServer, VHDs are always fixed size.)

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For VMware environments, do not use Storage vMotion. Storage must remain in a fixed location.

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For Hyper-V environments, do not use Storage Migration. Storage must remain in a fixed location.