NAS Backups Overview

This chapter provides details and requirements for protecting the data stored on Network Attached Storage (NAS). Review this information to determine the best strategy for your environment and to ensure requirements have been met before you start protecting your NAS data.

Unitrends uses the following protocols to protect data stored on NAS devices:

• Common Internet File System (CIFS)
• Network File System (NFS)
• Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP)

To protect this data, add the NAS share or NDMP device to the backup appliance as a protected asset. The NAS is then backed up through the network connection. For NAS shares, data is backed up just like any other internal directory or volume. Data transfers more quickly than if you simply mount the share on another protected asset.

Requirements and considerations for NAS protection vary depending on the protocol you are using. See the following for details:

There are benefits to both approaches Unitrends offers for protecting a NAS. The recommended approach for you depends on your business requirements. Use the following comparison to determine how to protect your NAS:

Function

NDMP

CIFS and NFS

Backup

Features of NDMP backups:

• Application backups. Protected at the volume level. Each volume is protected in a separate backup job. Captures Access Control Lists (ACL) and other file attributes.
• Full, Differential, and Incremental backup modes. Automatically promotes every 10th incremental to a differential.
• Shorter backup windows, especially if protecting many small files.

Features of CIFS and NFS backups:

• File-level backups. Protected at the NAS share level.
• Full, incremental, differential, and selective backup modes.

Recover

Features of NDMP recovery:

• Recover to NDMP devices of the same vendor. See vendor documentation for additional compatibility limitations.
• Point-in-time recovery of the entire backup group is supported.
• Recovering individual files from a backup is supported for some filers.

Features of CIFS and NFS recovery:

• Recover to the same CIFS or NFS device or to an alternate CIFS or NFS device.
• Point-in-time recovery of the entire backup group is supported.
• Recovery of selected files is supported.

Hot backup copy

Configure volumes on the NDMP device for backup copy to the Unitrends Cloud or to another Unitrends appliance.

Configure the CIFS or NFS asset for backup copy to the Unitrends Cloud or to another Unitrends appliance.

Better deduplication and backup copy performance. Longer retention possible because of smaller backup copy footprints.

Cold backup copy

Backup copy at the file-level or by volume.

Backup copy at the file-level.

The following table describes features and limitations to consider when planning your NAS CIFS/NFS protection strategy.

Feature

Description

Backup

The following apply to NAS CIFS/NFS backups:

• The NAS is protected at the share level. Backups start at the NAS mount point and do not include files in other system directories. You specify the desired mount point when adding the NAS asset to the backup appliance.

If you want more granular control:

– For a given NAS share, add separate mount points to the appliance, each as a separate asset. Create jobs for each asset you add.
– When creating jobs, select folders and/or files to include or exclude from the backup. (Wildcards are not supported for inclusion lists.)
• Open files are not included in the backup. Be sure to schedule jobs to run when file activity is at its lowest level.
• Permissions of the files as seen when mapped to the backup appliance are not exactly the same as those on the NAS share.
• If the NAS share is configured for authentication, you must supply credentials to access the specified mount point. If in your environment you only have credentials to access a parent directory, enter the full path to the parent directory and specify desired folders and files to include in the backup.
• The NFSv4 protocol is not supported.

Recovery

The following apply to NAS CIFS/NFS recovery:

• Point-in-time recovery of the entire backup group is supported.
• Recovery of select files is supported.
• You can recover to the original location, to another location on the original NAS, or to another NAS CIFS/NFS asset.

Nutanix AHV shares

You can protect Nutanix AHV shares by running Unitrends NAS backups over the NFS protocol . (Due to a Nutanix limitation, Unitrends NAS backups are not supported for Nutanix SMB shares.)

To protect a Nutanix AHV share over the NFS protocol, you must first enable the multi-protocol management access for NFS option. To configure this setting:

1 In the Nutanix Prism interface, select the share.
2 Click Update and check the multi-protocol management access for NFS box.

Note:  If the box is grayed out, go to the protocol management option and select user mapping. Complete the mapping steps to enable the checkbox.

Backup Copy

Backup copy to an off-site target is supported.

The following table describes features and limitations to consider when planning your NAS NDMP protection strategy.

Feature

Description

Appliance requirements

The Unitrends appliance must meet the following requirements to protect NAS devices using the NDMP protocol:

• Must be running Unitrends release 9.0.0-13 or higher.
• Must be licensed for the NDMP feature. Check the appliance license string for NDMP=X, where X equals the number of NDMP licenses purchased. To view the license string, select Configure > Appliances > Edit > License.

NDMP requirements

The following NDMP requirements apply:

• Unitrends protects NDMP version 4.0.
• Unitrends currently certifies devices from NetApp and EMC (Celerra, VNX, and VNXe). Devices from other vendors can be added as “Generic” NDMP NAS assets. Consider vendor specific limitations when protecting generic assets.
• It is important to be familiar with your vendor’s documentation and limitations because they can affect Unitrends protection of your NDMP device.
• NDMP password:
– Your NDMP NAS device must be configured with an MD5 password. Clear text passwords are not supported.
– For VNXe devices only, the password cannot contain the following characters: & and *.

Network requirements

The following network requirements apply:

• Unitrends uses a single, customer-specified IP address when protecting an NDMP asset. NDMP operations to and from multiple isolated IP networks are not supported.
• These ports must be open for bi-directional traffic:
– Port range 32768 - 61000 - Unitrends dynamically assigns ports in this range when protecting NDMP devices. If your environment is configured with a firewall, make sure the ports in this range are open.
– Port 10000 - Unitrends appliances use this control port when protecting NDMP. Port 10000 is open for the following security levels: None, Low, and Medium. You cannot protect NDMP devices if you set your Unitrends appliance to High security. For details, see To view or edit port security settings.

Backup and recovery

See these topics for backup and recovery requirements and considerations:

• All jobs
• Backup jobs
• NetApp cluster protection
• Advanced configuration settings
• Recovery jobs

All jobs

The following apply to all NDMP jobs:

• Because NDMP NAS devices normally have a limited number of NDMP connections, backup and recovery jobs for NDMP assets are queued and run as NDMP connections become available.
• Non-UTF-8 compatible characters cause backups to run more slowly. If your NAS share contains non-UTF-8 compatible characters, it is recommended to convert the NAS share to support UTF-8.

Backup jobs

The following apply to NAS NDMP backups:

• NAS NDMP assets are protected at the volume level. A separate backup runs for each volume.
• A recurring full backup must be in the schedule.
• NDMP only supports nine consecutive incremental backups between successful fulls and differentials. Schedules with more than nine consecutive incremental backups result in automatically promoted differential backups. For details, see Automatic promotions of NDMP Incremental backups.
• To protect NetApp high availability C-mode clusters, additional requirements apply. See NetApp cluster protection below for details.
• Additional configuration may be required in your environment. See Advanced configuration settings below for details.

NetApp cluster protection

Additional configuration is needed to protect NetApp high availability C-mode clusters. Once you have configured your clusters for Unitrends protection, they can be backed up and recovered using the standard Unitrends NDMP procedures.

The following requirements must be met to protect NetApp clusters:

• NetApp ONTAP must be version 7.x or 8.x.
• NDMP must be enabled for both the cluster and the Vserver. See the NetApp configuration documentation and Configuring NDMP NetApp clusters for backup for details.
• Volumes to protect must be exported through an LIF. We recommend assigning a unique IP address to each volume you wish to backup.

In NetApp cluster environments, volumes may migrate over to a different node. If your NDMP schedule has the Auto-include new NDMP Volumes box checked, migrated volumes are automatically included in the backup schedule. Generally, adding a migrated volume to the schedule causes the next backup to run as a full backup, even though a full of this of this migrated volume may exist on the appliance. If desired, you can prevent a new full backup by migrating the volume back to the original node or by unchecking the Auto-include new NDMP Volumes box in the backup schedule.

Advanced configuration settings

Because each NDMP vendor has different limitations, there are some advanced configuration settings that might be required to protect your NDMP device. To access the advanced configuration options, go to the Configure > Appliances > Edit > Advanced > General Configuration page, and scroll down to the NDMP section.

The following advanced settings are available:

• DAR - Unitrends uses Direct Access Recovery (DAR) to recover NDMP backups. DAR is on (DAR=1) by default.

For NetApp devices, DAR only works with ONTAP version 8.0 and later. If using an earlier version of ONTAP, disable DAR by setting DAR=0.

• IPv4 Address - Blank by default. Unitrends automatically attempts to use the eth0 or seth0 IPv4Address. If your environment is configured with either of these IP addresses, it is retrieved and used.

If you do not have eth0 or seth0 configured in your environment, you must enter an IP address in this field and restart NDMP services as described in To restart NDMP services. (This is most common in the case of bonded NICs.) Entering an IP address in this field will override eth0 or seth0.

• Username - The NDMP daemon username defaults to ndmp. If you change this username, NDMP services must be restarted as described in To restart NDMP services.
• Password - The NDMP daemon password defaults to unitrendsndmp. If you change this password, NDMP services must be restarted as described in To restart NDMP services.
• Maximum Running NDMP Jobs (Only accessible from the terminal — Configuration Options section) - The maximum number of running NDMP sessions per NAS NDMP asset defaults to 2. For more information, see Maximum Running NDMP Jobs.

Recovery jobs

The following limitations apply to NAS NDMP recovery:

• NDMP backups can only be recovered to NDMP devices of the same vendor.
• Supported recovery targets vary by vendor.

Recovery to the original location is supported for all vendors. See the vendor documentation to determine whether you can recover to another location on the original NDMP device, or to another NDMP device that has been added to the appliance as an asset.

• Point-in-time recovery of the entire backup group is supported.
• Recovery of selected files is supported for some NDMP devices from the certified vendors. See the vendor documentation for compatibility limitations.
• When performing point-in-time recovery of an NDMP volume, you cannot specify files to include or exclude. The volume is recovered exactly as it was at the selected recovery point.
• Recovery of selected files that contain non-UTF-8 compatible characters is not supported. Instead you must recover the entire backup.

Backup Copy

Backup copy to an off-site target is supported.

NDMP services must be restarted on the Unitrends appliances if any of the following are changed: the IPv4 address, the NDMP daemon username, or the NDMP daemon password.

1 Using a terminal emulator, such as PuTTY, connect to the appliance using the following:
– Appliance IP address
– Port 22
– SSH connection type
2 Log in as user root.
3 Enter the following command:

# service unitrends-ndmp restart

NDMP limits the number of incrementals that can occur between fulls to 9. This limitation is enforced by assigning and tracking levels of each backup mode. It does so in the following way:

• Fulls are always counted as level 0.
• Differentials are always counted as level 1.
• Incrementals are counted by increasing the previous backup’s level by 1. These can be counted as levels 1-9, with 9 being the maximum level allowed by the protocol.

For schedules, the NDMP level assignments described above result in incremental backups being automatically promoted to differentials if there is already a level-9 backup in that volume’s current backup group. The promotion to a differential resets the level to 1. After the automatic promotion, the schedule resumes running the jobs as expected.

Note:   Only 8 incrementals run between automatically promoted differentials because the count starts from 1 rather than 0 (as it does with full backups).

On-demand incremental backups also affect the backup level for the volume. If you attempt to run a one-time incremental backup and the backup level is less than 9, the job is queued and the backup level of the group is increased by one. However, if the volume’s backup level is already 9, the job is not queued. Instead you are notified that you have reached the maximum limit of consecutive incremental backups for this volume and a full must be run.

Note:   Only 8 incrementals run between automatically promoted differentials because the count starts from 1 rather than 0 (as it does with full backups).

Because differential backups are always counted as level 1, they do not have the same limitations as incremental backups. Any number of differentials can be run between successful full backups of an NDMP volume.

After ensuring all requirements have been met, do the following to start protecting your NAS device:

Step 1: Add the NAS to the Unitrends appliance as described in To add a NAS CIFS or NFS asset or To add a NAS NDMP asset.
Step 2: Run backup jobs as described in To create a NAS CIFS or NFS backup job or To create a NAS NDMP backup job.