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QoreStor 7.1.2 - User Guide

Introducing QoreStor Accessing QoreStor Configuring QoreStor settings
Licensing QoreStor Configuring SAML Configuring an SSL Certificate for your QoreStor System Configuring Active Directory settings Understanding system operation scheduling Configuring share-level security for CIFS shares Configuring Secure Connect Enabling MultiConnect Configuring and using Rapid NFS and Rapid CIFS Configuring and using VTL Configuring and Using Encryption at Rest Configuring and using the Recycle Bin Configuring Cloud Reader Configuring RDA immutability
Managing containers Managing local storage Managing cloud storage Managing replications Managing users Monitoring the QoreStor system Managing QoreStor remotely Support, maintenance, and troubleshooting Security recommendations guide About us

Cloud tier replication

QoreStor's cloud tier feature enables QoreStor data to be quickly and easily accelerated to the cloud tier. Using your existing data management applications (DMAs) and any supported protocol, files can be written to a QoreStor container and replicated to your cloud tier according to easily defined policies.

QoreStor provides a policy engine that allows you to set idle time and on-premises retention criteria to be used in identifying which files are most suited for replication to the cloud. Policies are defined at the container level and apply to all files within that container. Using the QoreStor Cloud Policy, you can replicate files based on:

  • Idle time - replicate stable files idle for more than the selected number of hours.
  • File extensions - replicate files that match or do not match names in a list of extensions.
  • Regular expressions - include or exclude files based on their match to configured regular expressions.
  • File locations - replicated files in a list of directories, or all files except those in a list of directories.

In addition, there is an On-Prem Retention Age policy that allows you to specify how long a copy of a file is kept after it has been replicated to the cloud tier. Once a file has been replicated, the file on the QoreStor server becomes a stub, meaning it exists in the namespace but the data exists only in the cloud tier.  Once a file has been stubbed and moved to the cloud tier, that file can no longer be edited.

With these policy options, you are able to configure cloud tier replication to meet one of three use cases:

  • Data replication - this creates a direct copy of the backup data stored in QoreStor on the cloud tier.
  • Extended hold - this offloads older and less frequently accessed data to the cloud tier for long-term archiving.
  • Replicate and extend - this provides both a direct replica and a long-term archive.

Caution: When storing backups of a server using continuous data protection (CDP), if you delete a cloud tier that contains CDP backups, the backups that are older than the on-prem retention age become unrecoverable. A segment file may be present for these backups, but the associated files may be stubbed and become unlinked during cloud tier deletion, which prevents you from restoring the backup.

Any data that is transferred from the QoreStor instance by the cloud tier is encrypted with zero knowledge encryption. The encryption keys are solely owned by you. If the encryption keys are placed in the cloud tier, a passphrase is used to encrypt those keys and that passphrase is only known to you. For added security, QoreStor obfuscates metadata and data store objects that are stored in the cloud tier.

Archive tier

QoreStor's archive tier feature enables QoreStor data to be quickly and easily archived to long-term Amazon S3 Glacier or Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive storage. Using your existing data management applications (DMAs) and a supported protocol (Object(S3), VTL or RDS), files can be written to a QoreStor container and migrated to your archive tier according to easily defined policies. QoreStor provides a policy engine that allows you to set file age and on-premises retention criteria to be used in identifying which files are most suited for replication to the cloud. Policies are defined at the container level and apply to all files within that container.

Using the QoreStor Cloud Policy, you can replicate files based on:

  • Idle time - replicate stable files idle for more than the selected number of hours.
  • File extensions - replicate files that match or do not match names in a list of extensions.
  • Regular expressions - include or exclude files based on their match to configured regular expressions.
  • File locations - replicated files in a list of directories, or all files except those in a list of directories.

Any data that is archived from the QoreStor instance by the archive tier is encrypted with zero knowledge encryption. The encryption keys are solely owned by you. If the encryption keys are placed in the archive tier, a passphrase is used to encrypt those keys and that passphrase is only known to you. For added security, QoreStor obfuscates metadata and data store objects that are stored in the archive tier.

Data stored in the archive tier is not available for immediate recovery. When a recovery is initiated, the data stays in the archive tier while a copy is made in S3 standard storage and kept for an amount of time specified by the archive_retention_in_warm parameter. Although recovery times may vary, the general expectations for recovery times are:

  • Amazon S3 Glacier storage: 3-5 hours
  • Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive: within 12 hours

Object interface (S3-compatible)

QoreStor's Object container provides an object storage interface which enables customers to write Object data(S3 format) directly to Qore. This allows solutions that leverage an S3-based connection to send data directly to a QoreStor instance instead of Amazon S3 with the added benefits of deduplication, encryption, replication and network optimized data transfer.

With object storage enabled, QoreStor creates a ObjectStorageGroup storage group and ObjectContainer container. This container can be configured with a cloud tiering policy to seamlessly move data to long-term storage. QoreStor allows you to configure multiple buckets within your object container namespace, each with different locking and retention settings.

Object Direct Storage

Object storage organizes files and their associated metadata into objects, which are then stored in a flat address space. Object storage provides greater insight to data usage, improved scalability, and lower storage costs when compared to traditional file or block storage. QoreStor can be installed in object-direct mode, which utilizes object storage for the main data repository, while metadata is written to higher performing storage. For more information, refer to the topics QoreStor Installation Modes and Installing QoreStor with Object Direct Storage in the QoreStor Installation Guide.

NOTE: When QoreStor is installed in an Object Direct configuration, if the backend object storage is not accessible QoreStor will go into Manual Intervention mode.

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