Manage backup and recovery appliances

Backup/recovery appliances are centrally managed from the management console. From the Appliances page, you can configure appliance settings, manage Backup and DR agents, update appliances, configure appliance networking, and remove appliances.

From this page, you can see information for each managed backup/recovery appliance, such as the following:

• The name of the appliance.
• Whether the connection to the management console is active or stale (not reachable based on the last synchronization).
• The IP address of the management console appliance.
• The date and time of the last synchronization between appliance and the management console.
• The appliance version.

• The update status of the appliance—up to date, pending, overdue, or out of support.

  • Up to date: This indicates the appliance is running on the latest version and no action is required.
  • Pending: This indicates the appliance has a new available update to apply. You can apply the update to the appliance from the Manage > Appliance Updates.
  • Overdue: This indicates the appliance is running on older versions and must be updated immediately. You can update the appliance from the Manage > Appliance Updates.
  • Out of support: This indicates the appliance is older than the supported version and needs to be updated immediately. You cannot back up any new entities or applications until you update the backup/recovery appliance to the supported version. You can apply the update to the appliance from the Manage > Appliance Updates.

For appliances that are running version 11.0.2 and higher you also see the following:

• The service account attached to the appliance
• The zone where the appliance is installed

• The project ID where the appliance is installed

  Warning: Don't rename the backup/recovery appliance, as the resources generated during deployment, such as the service account, Google Cloud credentials, firewall rules, and managed appliance, are not renamed. Renaming of the appliance is not supported at this time.

To modify the display of fields that appear in the Appliances table, follow these steps.

1. Click the Manage tab and select Appliances from the drop-down menu. The Appliances page opens listing all appliances managed by the management console.

2. To modify the display, you can do the following:

   • Adjust Fields: To modify the fields that appear in the table, right-click within the table header row and click the checkboxes for the fields you want displayed–or uncheck them for fields you don't want to view.
   • Sort Content: To sort the content listed in a table column by alphanumeric order, select a column header and then click the Up or Down arrow to change the order.
   • Adjust Column Width: To adjust the width of a table column to show more content in the table, drag the column divider in a column header to the left or right to resize the column width. Column dividers are marked by a pair of thin gray lines.
   • Filter By: To filter the list, click show filter. Enter one or more filter criteria as appropriate. To clear a filter, click x to the right of the applied filter.
   Note: Filters that are of type text, list, and date persist across different management console sessions for the same user.

3. To export the appliances list, click the Export icon. You can export the appliances list in PDF format.

Filter by appliance

You can filter the appliance-related data shown in the management console.

To filter data by appliance:

1. Click the Manage tab and select Appliances from the drop-down menu.

   The Appliances page opens.

2. Click the Filter icon in the top right-hand corner of the Appliances page.

   Data related to only the selected appliance is shown. This information varies depending on the appliance selection.

3. From the drop-down menu, select the Appliances that you want to filter.

4. Click Save.

Resources summary

The Resources Summary page provides an at-a-glance view of the status of an appliance. It includes usage information and the warning threshold for VDisks.

When usage of any of these resources reaches or exceeds the warning threshold, the appliance performance can suffer. To avoid this issue, contact support for guidance and solutions.

View and manage VDisk usage

A VDisk is a virtual disk on an appliance that imports the appliance's hosts, applications, users, and roles. The appliance is presented to the host as a unit of usable storage capacity.

You use VDisks for each LUN, VMDK, database, or file system protected, with each volume comprising a snapshot of an application, and each LUN comprising a mount or clone of an application.

To view the number of virtual disks on an appliance:

1. Click the Manage tab and select Appliances from the drop-down menu.

   The Appliances page opens. Select an appliance.

2. Click Configure Appliance.

   The Appliance Configuration page opens.

3. Select Resources from the left navigation panel.

4. Select the VDisks tab.

   Under VDisk Usage, the following information is provided:

   • The number of VDisks in use
   • The number of available VDisks
   • The total VDisk capacity

Top Ten VDisks list

The Top Ten VDisks list shows the ten applications that have the maximum number of virtual disk copies. These are usually snapshots, mounts, or clones.

Change the warning threshold for VDisks

If the number of virtual disks created on an appliance exceeds the warning threshold, a warning is posted to the event log.

The default warning threshold for VDisks usage is 90%. To change the warning value, drag the threshold value to the new value and click Save.

Note: Change the warning threshold only if your usage requirements justify a different value. Consult support as they can help.

Reduce VDisk consumption

Performing the following tasks immediately reduces VDisk consumption:

• Changing VMware VMDKs that don't need to be protected to Independent Mode, as these cannot be protected by VMware snapshots.

• Grouping SQL databases from a single host together into a consistency group. For example, if a single host has 9 SQL databases, create one Consistency Group for that host and include all nine databases, then protect that group rather than the individual databases. In this example, VDisk consumption is reduced from nine to one.

• Reducing the number of snapshots kept for an application by changing the policy template used by a backup plan.

• Deleting unneeded mounts, clones, and LiveClones.

Replication

You can configure the bandwidth used to replicate StreamSnap image data from one backup/recovery appliance to another so that two appliances can share the bandwidth available to your organization with other organizational resources. Throttling determines the amount of bandwidth you want to dedicate to an appliance for your data replication.

When two backup/recovery appliances are paired for replication (see Data replication), you can choose to set the maximum bandwidth used for this replication. The bandwidth setting is made from the point-of-view of the originating appliance, called the A-side. When choosing this bandwidth setting, the bandwidth chosen represents the amount of traffic originating from this appliance to appliance B. If appliance A replicates to appliances B and C simultaneously, bandwidth throttling is set independently for appliance A to appliance B and appliance A to appliance C. For example, for paired appliances A and B bandwidth throttling can be 10Mbps while paired appliances A and C can be 100Mbps.

Configure bandwidth throttling

Use the Bandwidth Throttling feature to limit the bandwidth used by the replication process between appliances.

• Enable Bandwidth Throttling: Set Throttling to On if you plan to limit the maximum amount of bandwidth available for appliance replication (Steam Snap). You can restrict bandwidth usage by turning on bandwidth throttling and limiting the maximum amount of bandwidth that the appliance shouldn't exceed for each type of replication.

• Disable Bandwidth Throttling: Set Throttling to Off if you don't want to restrict the amount of bandwidth used for appliance replication. This option lets you use the maximum available bandwidth.

Use these instructions to turn bandwidth throttling on or off with a bandwidth limit:

1. Click the Manage tab and select Appliances from the drop-down menu.

   The Appliances page opens.

2. Select an appliance.

3. Click Configure Appliance to open the Appliance Setup page.

4. Go to System, then Configuration, then Appliance Settings.

5. Click the StreamSnap tab if you have to turn bandwidth throttling on or off for StreamSnap replication.

6. To enable bandwidth throttling, click On.

   Note: If you choose not to restrict the maximum amount of bandwidth used for backup/recovery appliance replication, click the Off button to disable bandwidth throttling.

7. Click Yes to override existing triggers or to configure a constant bandwidth value.

8. Enter the new bandwidth in Set bandwidth value to. A value of zero means unlimited bandwidth.

9. Click Save to update the bandwidth configuration settings.

Schedule bandwidth throttling

During various times of the day or week you may want a backup/recovery appliance to use less bandwidth so that other priority services can use this bandwidth. You can customize the bandwidth throttle so that it runs automatically based on predefined schedules (triggers).

This section describes how to schedule bandwidth throttles. Each schedule specifies the amount of bandwidth that you want to allocate during the interval and time. You can create separate schedules for weekdays and weekends.

Note: You can create up to 10 different bandwidth triggers.

Use the instructions to create a custom schedule for bandwidth throttling:

1. Click the Manage tab and select Appliances from the drop-down menu.

   The Appliances page opens.

2. Select an appliance.

3. Click Configure Appliance to open the Appliance Configuration page.

4. Go to System, then Configuration, then Appliance Settings. This page lets you coordinate bandwidth throttling through the use of scheduled triggers.

5. Click the StreamSnap subtab if you have to schedule bandwidth throttling for StreamSnap replication.

6. Click the On button next to Throttling to enable throttling.

7. Click the No button next to Override Triggers.

8. Click the Add New Trigger (+) button to add a new trigger schedule.

9. Enter the bandwidth value (in Mbps), day, and time for the new schedule.

10. Click Save to update the changes.

Activate a trigger schedule

To activate a trigger schedule, select the schedule and click Set This Trigger.

Delete a trigger schedule

To delete an existing trigger schedule, select the schedule and click Remove This Trigger (-).

View bandwidth usage statistics

Use the Statistics tab to monitor bandwidth consumption for StreamSnap replication.

Use these instructions to view the bandwidth statistics for your appliances:

1. Click the Manage tab and select Appliances from the drop-down menu.

   The Appliances page opens. Select an appliance.

2. Select an appliance.

3. Click Configure Appliance to open the Appliance Configuration page.

4. Go to System, then Configuration, then Appliance Settings.

5. Click the Statistics tab.

6. By default, StreamSnap is selected from the Replication Type drop-down list.

7. A pair of charts appears displaying outgoing and incoming bandwidth consumption statistics for the selected appliance on a time scale that you select.

   • The Incoming Bandwidth (All Sources) graph depicts the incoming traffic reaching the local appliance from all joined appliances.
   • The Outgoing Bandwidth graph depicts the outgoing traffic from the local appliance to the selected appliance.

   You can modify the scale by selecting a time unit, such as Day (bandwidth used during the last seven days), Hour (bandwidth used during the last 23 hours), and Minute (bandwidth used in the last 10 minutes). The bandwidth is measured in Mbps.

Remove a backup/recovery appliance from the management console

You can remove a backup/recovery appliance from management by the management console through the Manage tab. All resources associated with this appliance will be removed from the management console.

When you remove an appliance, the following process occurs:

• De-schedules resource replication.
• Removes everything related to the removed backup/recovery appliance from the management console database except promoted backup templates, users, and roles.
• Untags all promoted backup templates on the target backup/recovery appliance to return it to free-standing status.
• Removes the management of the backup/recovery appliance by the management console.

To remove a backup/recovery appliance from the management console:

1. Click the Manage tab and select Appliances from the drop-down list.

   The Appliances page opens listing all appliances managed by the management console.

2. Select the appliance you want to remove from the list, then click Remove Appliance.

   Note: You can also right-click on the appliance and select Remove Appliances.

3. Click Confirm in the confirmation dialog.

Note: A backup/recovery appliance runs forever, even if it is removed from the management console, until the instance is stopped or deleted.