Rapid Recovery 6.5 - System Requirements Guide

Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) is a replacement for Basic Input/Output System (BIOS). For Windows systems, UEFI uses the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) system partitions that are handled as simple FAT32 volumes.

Protection and recovery capabilities are available in Rapid Recovery for EFI system partitions with the following operating systems:

• Windows: Windows versions 8*, 8.1*, 10; Windows Server versions 2012*, 2012 R2*, 2016 and 2019.
  
• Linux: All supported versions of Linux.

Rapid Recovery also supports the protection and recovery of Resilient File System (ReFS) volumes for Windows 10, Windows Server versions 2012*, 2012 R2*, and 2016. Protection and recovery of ReFS volumes is not supported on Windows Server 2019.

Rapid Recovery supports taking snapshots of all dynamic and basic volumes. Rapid Recovery also supports exporting simple dynamic volumes that are on a single physical disk. As their name implies, simple dynamic volumes are not striped, mirrored, spanned, or RAID volumes.

The behavior for virtual export of dynamic disks differs, based on whether the volume you want to export is protected by the Rapid Recovery Agent software, or is a VM using agentless protection. This is because non-simple or complex dynamic volumes have arbitrary disk geometries that cannot be fully interpreted by Rapid Recovery Agent.

When you try to export a complex dynamic disk from a machine with the Rapid Recovery Agent software, a notification appears in the user interface to alert you that exports are limited and restricted to simple dynamic volumes. If you attempt to export anything other than a simple dynamic volume usingRapid Recovery Agent, the export job fails.

In contrast, dynamic volumes for VMs you protect agentlessly are supported for protection, virtual export, restoring data, and BMR, and for repository storage, with some important restrictions. For example:

• Protection: In the case when a dynamic volume spans multiple disks, you must protect those disks together to maintain the integrity of the volume.
• Virtual export: You can export complex dynamic volumes such as striped, mirrored, spanned, or RAID volumes from an ESXi or Hyper-V host using agentless protection. However, the volumes are exported at the disk level, with no volume parsing. For example, if exporting a dynamic volume spanned across two disks, the export will include two distinct disk volumes.

  Caution: When exporting a dynamic volume that spans multiple disks, you must export the dynamic disks with the original system volumes to preserve the disk types.

• Restoring data: When restoring a dynamic volume that spans multiple disks, you must restore the dynamic disks with the original system volumes to preserve the disk types. If you restore only one disk, you will break the disk configuration.
• Repository storage: Additionally, Rapid Recovery supports the creation of repositories on complex dynamic volumes (striped, mirrored, spanned, or RAID). The file system of the machine hosting the repository must be NTFS or ReFS.

To protect your cluster properly, the Rapid Recovery Agent software must be installed on each of the machines or nodes in the cluster. Rapid Recovery supports the application versions and cluster configurations listed in the following table.

¹ Microsoft Exchange support includes both standalone and Database Availability Group (DAG) for all versions listed.

² Microsoft discontinues support for Windows Server 2008 R2 on January 14, 2020. After this date, Rapid Recovery continues limited support for Windows Server 2008 R2 (SP1 only) in release 6.5. Customers are advised to migrate to newer supported versions to continue backing up data using Rapid Recovery.

Live migration is a Hyper-V feature of Windows Server which lets users move running VMs from one Hyper-V host to another. Rapid Recovery supports Hyper-V live migration when moving VMs between nodes in a cluster. Live migration between separate hosts (a Hyper-V 2016 feature) is not supported with Rapid Recovery.

If using Rapid Snap for Virtual agentless protection, a supported version of Rapid Recovery Agent must be installed on the Hyper-V host. If using agent-based protection, Rapid Recovery Agent must be installed on each node in a protected Hyper-V cluster, but is not required on the host.

If using Rapid Snap for Virtual agentless protection, a supported version of Rapid Recovery Agent must be installed on the Hyper-V host. If using agent-based protection, Rapid Recovery Agent must be installed on each node in a protected Hyper-V cluster, but is not required on the host.

The supported disk types include:

• GUID partition table (GPT) disks greater than 2 TB
• Master Boot Record (MBR) disks less than 2 TB

The supported mount types include:

• Shared drives that are connected as drive letters (for example, D:)
• Simple dynamic volumes on a single physical disk (not striped, mirrored, or spanned volumes)
• Shared drives that are connected as mount points