Backup Administration and Procedures

These procedures provide instructions for creating and managing backup jobs and backup copy jobs. The procedures are run from the Jobs page of the Unitrends User Interface.

NOTE  Your Unitrends user account determines which procedures you can run. Procedures that you cannot run do not display or are disabled in the UI.

See the following topics for details:

●   Preparing for backups and About creating backup and backup copy jobs to determine how you will implement your protection strategy.

●   Creating backup jobs to create backup jobs manually.

●   Creating backup copy jobs to create backup copy jobs manually.

●   Creating SLA policies to create SLA policies. Creating an SLA policy automatically creates associated backup and backup copy jobs.

●   Managing scheduled jobs to manage existing job schedules.

●   Managing SLA policies to manage existing SLA policies.

●   Managing active jobs to manage jobs that are currently running.

●   Viewing recent jobs to view jobs that ran over the last 7 days.

●   Viewing system jobs to view system-level jobs that ran over the last 7 days.

●   Deleting backups and backup copies to delete backups and backup copies.

For information on generating reports on backups, backup copies, and SLA policies, see Reports.

Before you run backups, it is recommended that you do the following to map out the best approach for your environment:

Step 1:   Review your company's business continuity plan to determine what you need to protect and the maximum data loss (RPO) and downtime (RTO) thresholds for compliance. Note the RPO, RTO, and retention requirements for each asset you will protect. You will need this information to create your job schedules.

Step 2:   Determine how you will protect your assets.

●   See the Protection Overview for information on the types of assets and data Unitrends protects, backup types and modes, best practices, and other key concepts.

NOTE  For Windows, VMware, or Hyper-V assets that have aggressive RPOs, consider adding replicas or instant recovery to your protection strategy. For details, see Windows file-level replicas, VM replicas, and Virtual machine instant recovery.

●   Review the applicable protection requirements and considerations. These vary by backup type. See these chapters for details:

●   Host-level Backups Overview – Host-level backups protect VMware, Hyper-V, AHV, and XenServer virtual machines by leveraging hypervisor snapshots.

●   File-level Backups Overview – File-level backups protect an asset's file system and operating system. You must install a Unitrends agent on the asset to run file-level backups.

●   Windows Image-level Backups Overview – Image-level backups protect a Windows asset at the disk and volume level. You must install the Unitrends Windows agent on the asset to run an image-level backup.

NOTE  You can opt to protect a Windows asset with file-level backups, image-level backups, or both backup types. The Windows agent supports both backup methods.

●   NAS Backups Overview – NAS backups protect data stored on a NAS device.

●   Application Backups Overview – Application backups protect applications, such as Exchange, SQL, and Oracle. You must install a Unitrends agent on the host asset to run application backups.

Step 3:   Add the assets to the backup appliance, as described in Managing protected assets.

Step 4:   Add any backup copy targets to the appliance, as described in Backup copy targets. (Required only if you will by copying backups to a hot or cold target.)

Step 5:   Review About creating backup and backup copy jobs to determine how you will create jobs.

Backup and backup copy jobs are initiated either by job schedules or on-demand by Unitrends users. Typically, schedules are used to implement a comprehensive protection strategy that aligns with the business continuity plan, and on-demand jobs are run in addition, as needed.

●   To set up job schedules, you can:

●    Create each schedule manually by using the Create Backup Job and Create Backup Copy Job dialogs.

●   Use the SLA Policy Automation feature to define policies that the appliance uses to create the required backup and backup copy schedules.

●   Use a combination of both methods.

●   To run an on-demand job, you can:

●    Create a new job and run it immediately, by using the Create Backup Job or Create Backup Copy Job dialogs.

●   Run a scheduled job on-demand from the Job Manager tab.

Unitrends offers a wide range of backup types to protect over 100 versions of servers, storage, operating systems, hypervisors, and applications. The first step in creating a backup job or SLA policy is selecting the type of asset you want to protect (for example, file-level assets or VMware assets). The asset type you select determines which backup method the appliance uses and the type of backup that is created. A given backup job or SLA policy can protect one or more assets of the type you select. (When picking assets to include, only the ones that match this asset type display in the UI.)

To decide which scheduling method to use, start by identifying the assets you will protect. The manual job creation method can be used for all asset types (physical machines, virtual machines, applications, etc.). SLA Policy Automation is supported for these asset types only: file-level Windows, file-level Linux, image-level Windows, and VMware, Hyper-V, and AHV virtual machines. See the table below for a complete list of asset types, their associated backup types, and whether SLA policies are supported.

NOTE  You can opt to run file-level backups of a virtual machine by installing a Unitrends agent on the VM and adding it to the appliance as an agent-based asset. The appliance then treats the VM as a physical asset.

For asset types supported by both scheduling methods:

●    SLA Policy Automation provides the quickest, simplest method for creating schedules that align with your business continuity plan's RPO and retention requirements.

●   Creating schedules manually gives you granular control and supports additional features. For example, you can choose which backup modes to use and when to run full backups.

For a detailed comparison of the scheduling methods, see Methods for scheduling jobs.

Backup type and SLA policy support by asset type

Asset type

Backup type

SLA Policy Automation supported?

File level

file-level

Yes for Windows and Linux

No for other file-level assets

Image level

image-level

Yes for Windows only

VMware

host-level

Yes

Hyper-V

host-level

Yes

AHV

host-level

Yes

XenServer

host-level

No

NAS

NAS

No

NDMP

NAS

No

Exchange, Oracle, SQL, SharePoint, or Cisco UCS

application

No

You can create schedules manually, use the SLA Policy Automation feature, or use a combination of both methods. Each policy or schedule can be used for a single asset type. See the following table for details about each method:

Schedule creation method

Description

SLA Policy Automation

The backup appliance automatically controls the initiation and flow of backups and backup copies through a single, simple policy.

How it works

You create a policy with the following information:

●   Assets to protect

●   RPO (backup frequency)

●   Backup retention

●   Whether to run hot and/or cold backup copies

The backup appliance automatically creates the backup and backup copy schedules needed for the settings you specified in the policy. See SLA backup schedule, SLA cold backup copy schedule, and SLA hot backup copy schedule below for descriptions of the additional settings used to create each schedule type.

Benefits

SLA policies provide these benefits:

●   Quickest way to set up schedules and backup retention. Use one dialog to create a single policy (instead of manually creating backup and backup copy schedules, and then setting retention by creating a long-term data management policy or by editing each asset individually).

●   Simplest way to align with RPO goals. Enter the desired RPO instead of manually calculating when backups of each asset should run and creating schedules based on your calculations.

●   Simplest way to copy backups to your hot and/or cold backup copy target. Check one box to copy to your hot target and another box to copy to your cold target.

Requirements and considerations

The following requirements and considerations apply to SLA Policy Automation:

●   The backup appliance must be running version 10.0 or higher (10.3 or higher for Windows image-level assets).

●   The following asset types are supported: file-level Windows, file-level Linux, image-level Windows, and VMware, Hyper-V, and AHV virtual machines. You must manually create job schedules for other asset types.

●   You must log in to the backup appliance directly to create SLA policies. You cannot create a policy for a managed appliance by logging in to its manager appliance.

●   An asset can be assigned to only one SLA policy.

●   A file-level asset can be assigned to one SLA policy and/or to one or more manually created backup schedules.

●   An image-level Windows asset can be assigned to one SLA policy and/or to one or more manually created backup schedules.

●   A virtual machine asset can be assigned either to one SLA policy or to one manually created backup schedule (to ensure that the VM exists in only one backup schedule).

●   SLA policy schedules do not support the auto-include assets option. You must manually create a backup schedule to use this option.

●   The hot backup copy option is supported only if a Unitrends appliance or the Unitrends Cloud has been added as a backup copy target. (For details on adding a hot target, see Backup copy targets.)

●   The cold backup copy option is supported only if the cold target has been added to the appliance and this target is one of the following types: third-party cloud, NAS, or iSCSI. (For details on adding a cold target, see Backup copy targets.)

●   If multiple cold targets exist, the policy copies backups to the one that was added first. To copy to a different cold target, you must manually create a backup copy job instead.

●   Do not directly edit job schedules that were created by an SLA policy. Instead, modify the SLA policy itself. The appliance automatically modifies the policy's schedules based on the changes that you make. On the Job Manager tab, SLA policy schedule names display with the prefix _SLA, so you can easily distinguish them from manually created schedules.

SLA backup schedule

A policy's backup schedule uses the incremental forever backup mode (for details, see Incremental forever backup groups).

SLA cold backup copy schedule

A policy's cold backup copy schedule uses the following settings. For additional backup copy considerations, see Preparing to create a backup copy job.

●   Backup copy target – Uses the first third-party cloud, NAS, or iSCSI target that was added to the backup appliance.

●   Backups copied – Copies the last backups. Includes all backup modes (fulls, incrementals, etc.).

●   Frequency – Runs daily at 3:00 AM.

●   Retention – Option to set minimum retention (the length of time a copy must be retained before it can be deleted).

●   Encryption – Option to encrypt cold copies. (Encryption must first be configured on the appliance. For details, see Encryption.)

●   Email report – Job report is emailed when the job completes.

●   Delete older copies – Older copies are deleted from the target as follows:

●   Copies are deleted only if there is not enough space for the copy job.

●   Copies that are held by a retention policy cannot be deleted.

●   Eligible copies are deleted until there is enough space for the job.

●   If deleting eligible copies cannot free adequate space for the entire job, the job fails and nothing is written to the target.

SLA hot backup copy schedule

Hot backup copies are sent to the target each time an eligible backup is created. For additional backup copy considerations, see Preparing to create a backup copy job.

Manually create each schedule

The backup appliance runs backup and backup copy jobs as indicated in user-created schedules.

How it works

You create the backup and backup copy schedules manually. To set backup retention, you create a long-term data management policy or edit each asset (setting retention is optional).

The appliance runs jobs at the times and frequency indicated in the schedules.

Benefits

Manually creating schedules gives you more granular control and additional options.

Manually-created backup schedules provide these benefits:

●   Supported for all asset types.

●   Can set retention by asset, by creating long-term data management policies or by using the Edit Asset dialog. This enables you to apply different retention settings to each asset. (An SLA policy's retention setting applies to all assets in the policy. If an asset is assigned to a policy, you cannot modify its retention setting by using the Edit Asset dialog.)

●   Can schedule any backup modes that are supported for the asset type (e.g., fulls, differentials, incrementals).

●   Can control when full backups run.

●   Can choose whether to receive email reports when the job completes.

●   Can use the auto-include option to automatically add newly detected assets to the schedule.

●   If you have created separate backup storage areas, you can specify which backup target to use.

●   For VMware, supports scheduling with regular expression filters. (For details, see To create a VMware backup schedule by using regular expression filters.)

Manually-created cold backup copy schedules provides these benefits:

●   Supported for all types of cold targets (eSATA, USB, tape, third-party cloud, attached disk, NAS, and SAN).

●   Can copy only fulls (or copy all backup modes).

●   Can specify a date range of backups to copy (or copy last backups).

●   Can specify the days and times when the jobs will run.

●   Can choose to fail the job without deleting copies if there is no more space available (or choose to delete older copies if there is no more space available).

●   These features are also supported and work just as they do with SLA policies:

●   Can encrypt backup copies. (Encryption must first be configured on the appliance. For details, see Encryption.)

●   Can set minimum retention (the length of time a copy must be retained before it can be deleted).

Requirements and considerations

Requirements and considerations vary by backup type and backup copy target. See these topics for details:

●   Backup copy targets

●   Host-level Backups Overview

●   File-level Backups Overview

●   Windows Image-level Backups Overview

●   NAS Backups Overview

●   Application Backups Overview