SUMMARY
This article describes supported cold, hot, and seeding backup copy methods by Unitrends appliance platform.
ISSUE
Each Unitrends platform, which includes both Recovery Series physical appliances and Unitrends Backup hypervisor-hosted virtual appliances, supports a different array of cold backup copy (Archive) and Hot copy (Replication) technologies. In this article we provide a chart clarifying which modes are supported across these platforms.
RESOLUTION
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*See the Unitrends Admin Guide for currently supported 3rd party cloud buckets vendors. Some vendors require a Unitrends gen 8 or newer appliance running RecoveryOS 7+ Once data is copied to a bucket it cannot be moved or copied to other storage and must not be used with offline storage options.
**Some restrictions and warnings apply to NAS systems:
- Cold backup copy (archive) to NAS devices are not intended to be rotational, the normal use is they remain on-site and online at all times. For the best experience rotating media offsite, leverage Disk or Tape. NAS "may" be used in offsite rotational schemes on 10.3.0 and higher Unitrends releases when multiple separate NAS devices with independent schedules are used.
- Shares hosted by Windows OS on general servers may be considered insecure and are also subject to application, NTFS or permission modification that may render data unrecoverable without warning. Unitrends strongly advises against the use of Windows-hosted media and recommends only hardware NAS applications be used for cold copy.
- Windows Native Deduplication and Windows Storage Spaces features are not supported on cold copy targets where a windows-hosted network share is used for any reason.
- Using a NAS share target through a firewall/gateway connection is insecure, forbidden by most compliance mandates, and is not supported. To create NAS copies at a remote location first replicate to another Unitrends appliance and export cold copies to NAS from that alternate system.
- CIFS mounts for Cold Copy currently require SMBv1 support in the NAS device. If you cannot enable SMBv1 support in your device, configure NFSv3 mounts instead. (NFS mounts are the best practice)
- Some custom or vendor specific NAS configurations may not be compatible.
- NAS device must not perform snapshots of itself or replicate exported data to other locations or removable media. Data once copied to a NAS must not be moved, renamed, or manually deleted directly within the NAS. Software code has been specifically created to detect cold copies that may have been modified or duplicated in this way and will reject the media for security reasons.
*** Unitrends Single Bay USB Docking Stations and 4 bay RXDA SATA 1U dock support a limited listing of drive models and systems. See Archive Troubleshooting for a list of officially supported disk models and required cable connectivity. Unitrends does not require individual disk drives to be purchased directly from Unitrends, but support troubleshooting efforts will be limited to disk models not certified by the Unitrend's QA department. NEVER USE GREEN DRIVES or any drives that enter a sleep state with the Unitrends Appliance as this may result in kernel panic or other issues up to and including complete appliance data loss. Drives will exclusively be supported in USB or SATA docking stations provided by Unitrends. 3rd party USB drives, thumb drives, or docks will not be supported in any way. The Unitrends USB3 sock is very special in that it allows our identification of the disk serial number placed in the dock, no other known device provides that feature which is critical to media rotational tracking.
***See KB Connecting the Disk Archiving Unit (RXDA) to Unitrends Enterprise Backup. To use a Unitrends RXDA with UB, a controller card and cable bracket of a specific model documented in this KB must be installed inside the ESXi host the UB lives on. For USB3 docking stations, the VMWare host must have a VMWare Certified and supported USB3 controller (not all are). A NAS seed may be required for some host hardware configurations where dock compatibility cannot be confirmed or is not listed as supported in this KB.
Tape Devices: Any physical tape jukebox conforming to SAS, or SCSI, or Fiber Channel definitions may theoretically be attached to applications with a supporting adapter card, however, it is the responsibility of the reseller or customer that attach such a device to Unitrends Physical Appliances to ensure correct operation via hardware configuration, software configuration, and software tool support. Although specific models may not be officially tested, any SAS or FC tape device that supports the MTX control commands and that does not require installation of 3rd party drivers or software for to be used with the Unitrends Recovery OS edition is supported. Each tape system must be connected to a single Unitrends System only and is not supported to be connected to other systems concurrently. UB Virtual Appliances do not support tape cold copy. Virtual Tape Library systems are not considered to be the equivalent of physical tape systems and are not expected to function.
Seeding Notes
Seeding Services are fee-based services provided by Unitrends Professional Services or our partners to efficiently move large initial data sets to hot copy targets at other locations. Customers with private targets who wish to perform seeding operations are not required to purchase seeding services, however, this in many cases will be necessary due to source/target seed device compatibility or site-to-site bandwidth limits. Though customers capable of using USB3 seeding devices based on the compatibility noted above can follow seeding documentation and may potentially perform a seed on their own, Unitrends Support does not provide any assistance for seeding operations attempted this way. All seeding support is provided only through Unitrends Professional Services which requires the seeding fees to be paid per seed source. Unitrends will include any necessary seeding hardware as part of the service.