Refer to the following important notes and guidelines for understanding storage expansion in QoreStor.
- For Standard and Cloud-Optimizeed installation modes, QoreStor supports a maximum of 5 locations (1 internal plus 4 expansion). When installed in Large mode, QoreStor supports a maximum of 7 locations.
- QoreStor can only add a mounted filesystem path. QoreStor will not create a filesystem if one is not present.
- The mounted filesystem should be XFS type.
- Mount path cannot be read-only.
- The mount path should not be already configured enclosure path.
- When adding storage, the filesystem service will be restarted.
- Storage can be added without being licensed, but an appropriately sized license is required to make the storage usable by QoreStor.
- Licenses can be added in multiples of Terabytes from 1 TB to the maximum capacity for your QoreStor installation mode.
Additional storage can be added through the QoreStor UI or via the system --storage command in the QoreStor CLI. Refer to the QoreStor Command Line Reference Guide for more information on the system --storage command.
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IMPORTANT: Adding storage requires QoreStor services to be restarted. This will take the QoreStor server offline for several minutes. |
To add storage
Before adding storage, ensure that the storage is mounted to the QoreStor server as an XFS filesystem. Refer to Guidelines for configuring additional storage for additional guidelines and requirements.
- In the navigation menu, click Local Storage to expand the menu, then click Storage Groups.
- Click Add Storage Location.
- Enter the mount path for the additional storage. Click Save.
- A warning will be displayed notifying you that a service restart may be required. Click Confirm to continue.
QoreStor enables multiple options for extending your on-prem environment to the cloud. Please refer to the sections below for additional information.
There are two ways QoreStor lets you use cloud storage containers: as secondary, policy-based storage or as primary storage with optimized deduplication.
Policy-based cloud storage
Policy-based cloud storage is available to any compatible backup software. It requires that you configure a schedule for when QoreStor automatically transfers backups to cloud storage.
There are three purposes for using policy-based cloud storage:
- Replication
- Tiering
- Archiving
For replication and tiering, the cloud storage group remains online, keeping the data accessible. For archiving, QoreStor uses offline Glacier storage, which is designed to store data for longer terms.
For more information about creating a cloud or archive tier, see Cloud tiering.
Direct-to-cloud storage
Direct-to-cloud storage is the feature that QoreStor offers which lets you store backed up data directly to a cloud container. The container can be in either the cloud storage group or the archive storage group. This feature is available only for NetVault backups. After you create the RDS container, you can enter the name of this container in the NetVault GUI as your primary storage location. QoreStor then automatically saves the backups to the cloud, performing optimized deduplication them during the process. Because the backups go directly to the container, QoreStor does not use the policy manager.
When you back up data from NetVault to a direct cloud container, the container behaves the same as any other QoreStor RDS container. The data is easily accessible, which lets you perform the following operations:
- Listing
- Editing
- Backup
- Restore
For more information about creating a direct-to-cloud container, see Configuring an RDS direct-to-cloud container.
Limitations of direct-to-cloud containers
Direct cloud containers include the following limitations:
- Only backup applications using the RDA container type are compatible with direct-to-cloud containers. It is recommended to use them for storing copies of backups.
- You can access and control the direct cloud container only through QoreStor. Although only NetVaultis compatible with the direct cloud container feature, the container does not appear as a repository in the NetVault UI and NetVault is not aware of its existence. The backups still pass through QoreStor to reach their destination.
- Archive tiers do not function as direct cloud containers. Verification is required for direct cloud containers, but data in Glacier containers is offline and inaccessible.
- Quest discourages using direct cloud containers as sources. When replicating, QoreStor recommends that you always use the RDS direct container as a target rather than a source repository.
- Cloud locking is not supported with direct to cloud containers.
- Direct cloud containers cannot be used with container continuous replication.