SUMMARY
Requirements for connecting the legacy Unitrends Disk Archiving Unit (RXDA Recovery Archive) to a Unitrends Enterprise Backup appliance.
ISSUE
The Unitrends Disk Archiving Unit (commonly known as the Unitrends RXDA) is a 1U, rack-mountable device designed to provide a spannable, hot swappable architecture for archival purposes that supports archive sets spanning from 1 to 4 drives at a time.
The unit connects to your Unitrends Recovery-Series physical appliance or Unitrends Backup appliances deployed to VMWare 5.1+ using an attached storage device via an eSATA or SAS cable. Certain parts are required to utilize this device with our Unitrends Enterprise Backup Product, as outlined below.
For a list of all Cold Copy supported modes by appliance type, see Supported Cold Backup Copy Modes by Appliance Platform
RESOLUTION
RXDA units can be connected to Unitrends full depth Rack Mount appliances equipped with either 4 SATA ports using a breakout cable (included with older units) or 1 SAS port cables (not included). Applainces that have USB-only connections and lack card expansion bays (half rack units and some desktop units) are not compatible with RXDA.
If you have lost your original cables you may contact your sales rep to acquire replacements for the SAS to eSATA or follow the links below. For eSATA cables, the following cable parts are supported:
ESAC01 KINGWIN 1 METER ESATA CABLE - ESATA TO ESATA 26AWG BLK (Style20276, E162747)
ESATA6 STAR TECH 2 METER ESATA CABLE - ESATA TO ESATA 26AWG BLK (Style2725, E74020-C)
Generation 7 model 814S-XXX and 818S-XXX sold after June 2017 do not come equipped with a SAS connection by default. The required card kit to support an RXDA on these units may be acquired new via your reseller. The use of 3rd party cards or the movement of cards between different appliances can result in the appliance warranty rendered void.
RXDA starting in late 2023 uses a SAS connector and are compatible with all older units. The cable is not included. a straight SAS 8644-to-8088 cable is required for Generation 9 and 10 systems. some generation 8 systems may require an 8088-to-8088 cable instead. Unitrends does NOT provide this cable.
Note, RXDA units equipped with 4xesata ports (distributed thru late 2023) are NOT compatible with generation 10 and later applainces.
To complete the connection between the Disk Archiving Unit and Unitrends Backup on VMWare, the following parts are required:
- Cable: SFF-8088 (miniSAS) to 4 eSATA - such as the Ably 6 Feet Mini SAS SFF-8088 26 Pin to 4 x eSATA 7 Pin Data Cable or CableCreation External Mini SAS 26pin (SFF-8088) Male to 4 x eSATA 7Pin Cable, 1.0M
- Adapter: LSI 9212-4i4e - LSI SAS 9212-4i4e - storage controller (RAID) - SATA 6Gb/s / SAS - PCIe 2.0
NOTES
Unitrends half-rack appliances and desktop-class appliances do not come with this connection and do not have slots to add in cards and are thus not compatible with the RXDA. If you are currently using an RXDA-compatible appliance and are upgrading to a newer unit, single-disk archives can be read on new appliances using USB single-drive docks, however, to support multi-drive archives prior created you will need to acquire an 8XXS-XXX series appliance or larger to continue RXDA compatibility.
A newer model RXDA was released in late 2023. This unit is not compatible with the above procedure. Only the "legacy" RXDA compatible with Gen 9 and older systems is. The new RXDA is compatible with Gen 7 and higher systems including Gen 10, but not VMWare.
For more information about how to use the Disk Archiving Unit with Unitrends Enterprise Backup, see the Disk Archiving Unit chapter in the Unitrends Administrator's Guide - Legacy Interface.
Only Unitrends provided single bay docking stations or RXDA appliances are supported for rotational disk use, and only when leveraging Unitrends-certified disk models. Never use "green" drives or 3rd party USB devices with a Unitrends appliance. Doing so can easily cause hardware or kernel crash issues that may result in complete data loss.