Recommended additional reading
The Rapid Recovery Installation and Upgrade Guide provides an overview of the Rapid Recovery architecture, and describes the steps necessary for installing the Rapid Recovery components, and for upgrading the Core or Agent components from earlier versions.
You can view or download this guide from https://support.quest.com/rapid-recovery/release-notes-guides/.
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For sales or other inquiries, visit https://www.quest.com/company/contact-us.aspx or call + 1-949-754-8000.
Technical support resources
Technical support is available to Quest customers with a valid maintenance contract and customers who have trial versions. You can access the Quest Support Portal at https://support.quest.com.
The Support Portal enables you to:
Glossary
The Rapid Recovery Agent is software installed on a physical or virtual machine that lets it be added to protection in the Rapid Recovery Core.
The first backup transfer saved to the Core is called a base image snapshot. All data on all specified volumes (including the operating system, applications, and settings), are saved to the Core. For more information, see snapshot.
The Rapid Recovery Central Management Console is an optional component intended for environments with two or more Rapid Recovery Cores. This component is a web portal providing a central interface where you can group, manage, and generate reports for multiple Cores using a single Web-based interface.
An individual machine that is part of a Windows Failover cluster.
The Rapid Recovery Core is the central component of the Rapid Recovery architecture. The Core provides the essential services for backup, recovery, retention, replication, archiving, and management. In the context of replication, the Core is also called a source core. The source core is the originating core, while the target core is the destination (another Rapid Recovery Core on its own dedicated server, where protected machines or clusters are replicated).
The Rapid Recovery Core Console is a Web-based interface that lets you fully manage the Rapid Recovery Core.
An event is a process that is logged by the Core. Events can be viewed within the Core Console by clicking the ![[Events]](/technical-documents/image/89e10d9b-aed2-4770-a7d1-0cc34d0b0a5a){kind=small}
The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) defines data deduplication as the replacement of multiple copies of data—at variable levels of granularity—with references to a shared copy to save storage space or bandwidth. The Rapid Recovery Volume Manager performs global data deduplication within a logical volume. The granularity level of deduplication is 8 KB. The scope of deduplication in Rapid Recovery is limited to protected machines using the same repository and encryption key.
Incremental snapshots are backups consisting only of data changed on the protected machine since the last backup. They are saved to the Core regularly, based on the interval defined (for example, every 60 minutes). For more information, see snapshot.
A license key is one method used to register your Rapid Recovery software or appliance. (You can also use a license file.) You can obtain license keys or files when you register on the Rapid Recovery License Portal for an account. For more information, see License Portal.
The Rapid Recovery License Portal is a Web interface where users and partners can download software, register Rapid Recovery appliances, and manage license subscriptions. License Portal users can register accounts, download Rapid Recovery Core and Agent software, manage groups, track group activity, register machines, register appliances, invite users, and generate reports. For more information, see the Rapid Recovery License Portal User Guide.
Rapid Recovery Live Recovery is an instant recovery technology for VMs and servers. It provides near-continuous access to data volumes in a virtual or physical server, letting you recover an entire volume with near-zero RTO and a RPO of minutes.
The Local Mount Utility (LMU) is a downloadable application that lets you mount a recovery point on a remote Rapid Recovery Core from any machine.
The Rapid Recovery Central Management Console introduces a new concept of management roles which lets you divide administrative responsibility among trusted data and service administrators as well as access control to support secure and efficient delegation of administration.
The Rapid Recovery Scalable Object Store is an object file system component. It treats all data blocks, from which snapshots are derived, as objects. It stores, retrieves, maintains, and replicates these objects. It is designed to deliver scalable input and output (I/O) performance in tandem with global data deduplication, encryption, and retention management. The Object File System interfaces directly with industry standard storage technologies.
Windows PowerShell is a Microsoft .NET Framework-connected environment designed for administrative automation. Rapid Recovery includes comprehensive client SDKs for PowerShell scripting that enables administrators to automate the administration and management of Rapid Recovery resources by the execution of commands either directly or through scripts.
Prohibited characters are characters that should not be used when naming an object in the Rapid Recovery Core Console. For example, when defining a display name for a protected machine, do not use any of the following special characters:
Prohibited phrases are phrases (or sets of characters) that should not be used as the name for any object in the Rapid Recovery Core Console, because they are reserved for the use of operating systems. It is best practice is to avoid using these phrases at all if possible. For example, when defining a display name for a protected machine, do not use any of the following phrases:
A protected machine—sometimes called an "agent"— is a physical computer or virtual machine that is protected in the Rapid Recovery Core. Backup data is transmitted from the protected machine to the repository specified in the Core using a predefined protection interval. The base image transmits all data to a recovery point (including the operating system, applications, and settings). Each subsequent incremental snapshot commits only the changed blocks on the specified disk volumes of the protected machine. Software-based protected machines have the Rapid Recovery Agent software installed. Some virtual machines can also be protected agentlessly, with some limitations.
Rapid Recovery sets a new standard for unified data protection by combining backup, replication, and recovery in a single solution that is engineered to be the fastest and most reliable backup for protecting virtual machines (VM), as well as physical and cloud environments.
Recovery points are a collection of snapshots of various disk volumes. For example, C:, D:, and E:.
A remote Core represents an Rapid Recovery Core that is accessed by a non-Core machine using the Local Mount Utility or the Central Management Console.
Replication is the process of copying recovery points from one Rapid Recovery Core and transmitting them to another Rapid Recovery Core for disaster recovery purposes. The process requires a paired source-target relationship between two or more Cores. Replication is managed on a per-protected-machine basis. Any machine (or all machines) protected or replicated on a source Core can be configured to replicate to a target Core. It is the recovery points that are copied to the target Core.
A repository is a collection of base image and incremental snapshots captured from the machines protected on a Rapid Recovery Core. Repositories must be created on fast primary storage devices. The storage location for a DVM repository can be local to the Core machine (in which case it is hosted on a supported Windows OS only). It can use direct-attached storage, a storage area network, or an appropriately rated network-attached server.
Representational State Transfer (REST) is a simple stateless software architecture designed for scalability. Rapid Recovery uses this architecture for its Application Program Interfaces (APIs) to automate and customize certain functions and tasks. There is a separate set of REST APIs for Core functionality and for protected machine (agent) functionality.
The process of restoring one or more storage volumes on a machine from recovery points saved on the Rapid Recovery Core is known as performing a restore. This was formerly known as rollback.
Retention defines the length of time the backup snapshots of protected machines are stored on the Rapid Recovery Core. Retention policy is enforced on the recovery points through the rollup process.
The rollup process is an internal nightly maintenance procedure that enforces the retention policy by collapsing and eliminating dated recovery points. Rapid Recovery reduces rollup to metadata operations only.
The Rapid Recovery Smart Agent is installed on the machines protected by the Rapid Recovery Core. The smart agent tracks the changed blocks on the disk volume and snapshots the changed blocks at a predefined interval of protection.
A snapshot is a common industry term that defines the ability to capture and store the state of a disk volume at a given point, while applications are running. The snapshot is critical if system recovery is needed due to an outage or system failure. Rapid Recovery snapshots are application aware, which means that all open transactions and rolling transaction logs are completed and caches are flushed prior to creating the snapshot. Rapid Recovery uses Microsoft Volume Shadow Services (VSS) to facilitate application crash consistent snapshots.
SQL attachability is a test run within the Rapid Recovery Core to ensure that all SQL recovery points are without error and are available for backup in the event of a failure.
The target Core, which is sometimes referred to as replica Core, is the Rapid Recovery Core receiving the replicated data (recovery points) from the source Core.
True Scale is the scalable architecture of Rapid Recovery.
Rapid Recovery Universal Recovery technology provides unlimited machine restoration flexibility. It enables you to perform monolithic recovery to- and from- any physical or virtual platform of your choice as well as incremental recovery updates to virtual machines from any physical or virtual source. It also lets you perform application-level, item-level, and object-level recovery of individual files, folders, email, calendar items, databases, and applications.
The Rapid Recovery Volume Manager manages objects and then stores and presents them as a logical volume. It leverages dynamic pipeline architecture to deliver TruScale scalability, parallelism, and asynchronous input-and-output (I/O) model for high throughput with minimal I/O latency.
Rapid Recovery provides the ability for providers of backup and disaster recovery services to white label or re-brand Rapid Recovery with their own identity; and then sell or distribute it as their own product or service.
A group of independent computers that work together to increase the availability of applications and services. The clustered servers (called nodes) are connected by physical cables and by software. If one of the cluster nodes fails, another node begins to provide service (a process known as failover). Users experience a minimum of disruptions in service. Rapid Recovery supports the protection of a number of SQL Server and Exchange Server cluster types.