NAS Backups Overview

Features of CIFS and NFS backups:

●   File-level backups. Protected at the NAS share level.

●   Full, incremental, differential, and selective backup modes.

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.

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.

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.

●   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.

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.

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:

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.

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 *.

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.

See these topics for backup and recovery requirements and considerations:

●   All jobs

●   Backup jobs

●   NetApp cluster protection

●   Advanced configuration settings

●   Recovery 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.

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.

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.

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.

●   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.

●   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.

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.

●   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.