There are a few activities that are specific to individual backup/recovery appliances. You execute these actions from the backup/recovery appliance control panel.
Shut down a backup/recovery appliance
Improperly shutting down a backup/recovery appliance can result in data loss.
Use the instructions below to shut down the appliance in a controlled manner:
Click Manage and select Appliances from the drop-down menu.
The Appliances page opens.
Select an appliance.
Click Configure Appliance to open the Appliance Configuration page.
Go to Configuration > Appliance Settings.
Click the Control Panel tab.
The corresponding panel opens.
Click Shutdown. The complete shutdown could take several minutes.
Enable or disable expirations and schedules
Expirations and schedules are enabled by default. This means backup images expire depending on the policy configuration.
If you disable expiration at an appliance level, it takes precedence over the individual policy configuration in policy templates. For example, if you configure a policy to expire backup images and then set Enable Expirations to No using the Appliance Control Panel the backup images do not expire.
Use these instructions to enable or disable expiration and scheduled backup images at an appliance level:
Click Manage and select Appliances from the drop-down menu.
The Appliances page opens.
Select an appliance.
Click Configure Appliance.
The Appliance Configuration page opens.
Go to Configuration > Appliance Settings.
Click the Control Panel tab.
The corresponding panel opens.
In the Policy Manager section under the Appliance Control Panel, click Yes or No to enable or disable expirations or enable or disable schedules.
Configure image preservation priority setting for snapshot images
Image preservation preserves snapshot images beyond their expiration dates to ensure that those images are properly processed by the backup/recovery appliance. Image preservation in the control panel allows you to modify or disable the application priority settings for preserved snapshots jobs.
See Images for information on the following:
- Displaying a list of preserved or discarded snapshot images in the Images section of Manage.
- Viewing Image Preservation status for preserved snapshot images in the dashboard.
- Viewing alerts and warnings specific to preserved snapshot images in the Monitor.
Image preservation overview
Your backup/recovery appliance may encounter resource challenges that result in snapshot jobs failing to execute in a timely manner. To enhance the success rate in which the appliance can complete snapshot jobs, the appliance operates in an image preservation mode. Image preservation enhances the scheduling features of the backup plan policy manager to be able to ride through periods of high change rates, reduced replication throughput, and other transient or abnormal situations. Image preservation delays snapshot and expirations in order to catch up with the transient system resource constraints. Images due for expiration are held until they have been processed by the appliance as long as there is capacity to do so by the appliance.
When the backup/recovery appliance attempts to preserve snapshot images, the appliance runs snapshot, images beyond their expiration date, continuously within the allowed window in an attempt to catch up on all image processing. In this case, the appliance processes the oldest unprocessed snapshot images ahead of the latest images. Once a backlogged image is processed, the image is expired per the backup plan schedule.
Preserved images automatically expire when pool space or VDisk count reaches the warning threshold levels set, see Resource consumption by appliance. When the appliance reaches a warning threshold level, images expire based on application priority and age. Images for applications with lower priority expire ahead of applications with higher priority. Within a priority level, older images expire before newer images. However, the last snapshot image of any application does not expire by this method. Rather than expiring, the most recent snapshot of any application, an older snapshot of a different application, or a snapshot of a higher priority application expires.
If you find that you need to limit the scope of image preservation to exclude lower priority applications, you can change preserved snapshot settings in the Control Panel from the Manage tab.
In addition, if over a period of time you find that the appliance is unable to catch-up with backlogged local jobs, you can disable the ability to preserve snapshot images.
Modify image preservation settings for snapshot images
You can modify Image Preservation priority settings for preserved snapshots jobs from the Control Panel from the Manage tab—Manage to Appliances to Configure Appliance to Configuration to Appliance Settings to Control Panel.
Modifying image preservation settings may be necessary when you need to do the following:
- Change the global application priority of Preserve Snapshots Images settings to limit the scope excluding applications of a certain priority setting. You can instruct the appliance to preserve images for only Medium and High Priority applications or to preserve images for only High Priority applications.
- Disable the Image Preservation function if the appliance is unable to catch-up with backlogged snapshot images.
Modify preserve snapshots settings
A snapshot image would normally be removed by the backup/recovery appliance based on the frequency, retention, start time, and end time specified in the policy template for an application. At times, the appliance may lag behind in the snapshot to remove jobs due to resource constraints. When this lag occurs, the setting of the Preserve Snapshots parameter in the Image Preservation section of the Control Panel defines to the appliance how to preserve snapshot images that are due for expiration but not yet successfully removed.
If necessary, you can change the application priority of Preserve Snapshots from All (the default setting) to Medium and High Priority applications or to Only High Priority applications. If you find that the appliance is unable to catch-up with backlogged local jobs, you can disable the Preserve Snapshots parameter by setting it to None.
Use these instructions to modify the Image Preservation settings for preserved snapshot jobs:
Click Manage and select Appliances from the drop-down menu.
The Applications page opens.
Select an appliance.
Click Configure Appliance to open the Appliance Configuration page.
Go to Configuration > Appliance Settings.
Click the Control Panel tab.
The corresponding panel opens.
Scroll to the bottom of the page to locate Image Preservation.
Options for the Preserve Snapshots parameter include the following:
- All: All applications — low, medium, and high priority—have their snapshot images preserved. This is the default setting.
- Medium and High Priority: High and medium priority applications have their snapshot images preserved.
- Only High Priority: Only high priority applications have their snapshot images preserved.
- None: No local snapshot images is preserved even if the job has not run on those images. When the snapshot image reaches its expiration time, barring other dependencies, it expires.
A confirmation dialog appears instructing you that changing the priority of the Preserve Snapshots parameter may result in additional or fewer snapshot images being preserved beyond their expiration until those images are processed into the snapshot pool. Click OK to proceed with the application priority change.
Set priorities for the first new applications
This option allows you to add special job scheduling slots that are used only to capture the first ingest of a new application. Turn this option off if you are adding a lot of new applications and want to get them protected quickly without regard for the impact on existing applications. Turn on this option at a low number of slots (for example, two slots) to limit the impact of the ingestion of new applications on existing applications; new applications are brought on-board more slowly.
Use these instructions to enable additional job slots for ingestion of new applications:
- Click Manage and select Appliances from the drop-down menu.
- Select an appliance.
- Click Configure Appliance to open the Appliance Configuration page.
- Go to Configuration > Appliance Settings.
Click the Control Panel tab.
The corresponding panel opens.
You can increase, decrease, or turn off slots dedicated to capturing new application data. You can select from one to 10 slots. However, there is a finite number of slots available, so slots assigned come at the expense of incremental job performance.
Appliance manager
From the Appliance Manager, you can do the following:
- Manage shared appliances
- Use the appliance's Control panel
Use these instructions to open the Appliance Settings:
Click Manage and select Appliances from the drop-down menu.
The Appliances page opens.
Select an appliance.
Click Configure Appliance to open the Appliance Configuration page.
Go to System > Configuration > Appliance Settings.
A list of appliances joined to the local appliance is displayed.
If an appliance is the master of a domain, it is listed as Sharing.
Manage joined appliances
From the Appliance Manager, you can do the following:
- Unjoin appliances that are joined with the selected appliance
- Throttle Streamsnap replication
- Select storage location for replicated snapshots and VMs
- View bandwidth statistics.
- Join appliances
Configure joined appliances
Appliances can be joined to additional appliances for disaster recovery and business continuity purposes at the same site or at different sites. Appliances must be joined in non-sharing mode.
Non-sharing mode
Use this mode when you want appliances to perform remote backup images for each other and for failover. You can join the following:
- One appliance with another appliance to enable replication from the former to the latter.
- One appliance with two appliances to enable different applications to replicate to separate appliances.
- Two appliances with one appliance to let the later act as a target for replication.
Non-sharing mode makes peers of the appliances that are joined. When two appliances join in the non-sharing mode, each appliance can be the destination for remote replication of data from the other appliance.
In non-sharing mode, each appliance uses its own users, policies, and templates, and protects only the applications assigned to it; peer appliances do not share users, policies, and templates.
The types of replications supported by backup/recovery appliance are given below.
Backup/recovery appliances support StreamSnap replication from the primary appliance to a remote appliance. For more information on Backup and DR Service replication, see Replicate data using appliances.
Join in non-sharing mode
The following are step-by-step instructions for joining appliances in non-sharing mode. For details, see Non-sharing mode.
Use these instructions to join the local appliance A and the remote appliance B:
- Click Manage and select Appliances from the drop-down menu.
- Select an appliance.
- Click Configure Appliance to open the Appliance configuration page.
Go to Appliance Settings > Join Appliance.
The Join A Remote Appliance page opens.
Enter the IP address of the remote appliance B in Remote Appliance IP address.
(Optional) Click Test Connection to validate the IP of the joining appliance.
Click Join. On successful configuration appliance B appears connected to the appliance A.
If you want to configure the bandwidth throttling used to replicate StreamSnap image data from one appliance to another so that the two paired appliances can share bandwidth.
Unjoin appliances
Before deleting a joined appliance, ensure that running jobs are not using the remote appliance.
Use these instructions to delete a joined appliance:
- Click Manage and select Appliances from the drop-down menu.
- Select an appliance.
- Click Configure Appliance to open the Appliance configuration page.
Go to System > Configuration > Appliance Settings.
A list of joined appliances is displayed.
Click Unjoin against the appropriate appliance.
If an appliance is in use in any resource profile, then the unjoin process will fail.
Diagnostic tools
The tools in the Diagnostics section of the Appliance Configuration page allows you to view a variety of charts to monitor the efficiency of your backup/recovery appliance. In addition, you can also view a System Load Report, and monitor the status of the backup/recovery appliance's SSD devices.
Charts
The backup/recovery appliance includes a suite of diagnostic charts to help you keep your appliance running efficiently. Information from the diagnostic charts can help you to plan changes to your appliance and to identify problems and potential problems with your appliance.
Use these instructions to display the diagnostic charts:
Click Manage and select Appliances from the drop-down menu.
The Appliances page opens.
Select an appliance and click Configure Appliance to open the Appliance Configuration page.
Go to Diagnostics then Charts.
Select a graph
From the Select a graph drop-down list you can select from the following diagnostic information to display as a graph in the Charts window.
Snapshot disk IOPS
The disk I/O per second required by snapshots—read and write activities. You can display data in the graph by Read IOPS, Write IOPS, or both selections.
Snapshot disk throughput
The logical amount of data required for snapshots, in KB/sec. You can display data in the graph by read KB/s, write KB/s, or both selections.
VDisk count
A count of the appliance VDisks every 15 minutes.
Select a time period for the graph
From the Select a time period drop-down list you can select the past day, week, or month to display the data in the associated graph.
Zoom an area in the graph
Use the zoom display below the selected graph to expand on a particular period of time. Use these instructions to zoom:
- Click-drag within a desired time period in the zoom display to select the view area. You can repeat this process for different time intervals in the display.
- To revert to the normal chart display, click anywhere within the zoom display.