Rapid Recovery 6.1.3 - User Guide

About protecting machines with Rapid Recovery

To protect your data using Rapid Recovery, you need to add the workstations and servers for protection in the Rapid Recovery Core Console; for example, your Exchange server, SQL Server, Linux server, and so on.

You must install the Rapid Recovery Agent software on all physical or virtual machines you want to protect in the Core.

NOTE: As an exception to this rule, if protecting virtual machines on a VMware or ESXi host or a Hyper-V host, you can use agentless protection. For more information, including restrictions for agentless protection, see Understanding Rapid Snap for Virtual.

In the Rapid Recovery Core Console, using one of the Protect Machine wizards, you can identify the machines you want to protect. You can do the following:

NOTE: Quest recommends limiting the number of machines you protect simultaneously to 50 or fewer, to preclude experiencing resource constraints that may cause the protect operation to fail.

When identifying your protection requirements for a single machine in the wizard, you can specify which volumes to protect. When you protect multiple machines, all volumes are protected by default. (You can change this later on an individual machine basis).

The wizard also lets you define a customized schedule for protection (or re-use an existing schedule).

Using advanced options, you can add additional security measures by specifying or applying an encryption key to backups for the machines you want to protect.

Finally, if one does not already exist, you can define a repository using the wizard.

After installing the Agent software, each machine must be restarted after installation.

For more information on how to protect workstations and servers, see Protecting a machine.

About protecting Linux machines with Rapid Recovery

The Rapid Recovery Agent software is compatible with multiple Linux-based operating systems (for details, see the system requirements included in Rapid Recovery Installation and Upgrade Guide or Rapid Recovery Release Notes). The Rapid Recovery Core is compatible only with Windows machines. While you can manage protected Linux machines from the Rapid Recovery Core Console, several procedures for Linux machines have steps that differ from their Windows counterparts. Additionally, you can perform some actions directly on a protected Linux machine by using the local_mount command line utility.

NOTE: The local_mount utility was formerly called aamount.

About managing Exchange and SQL servers in Rapid Recovery Core

Options specific to Exchange Server and SQL Server appear in the Rapid Recovery Core Console only when an instance of the software and related files are detected on protected servers. In those cases, additional options are available when you select the protected machine in the Core Console.

For example, if you select a protected Exchange server in the left navigation menu, then the menu options that appear for that protected machine include an Exchange drop-down menu option.

If you select a protected SQL server in the left navigation menu, then the menu options that appear for that protected machine include a SQL drop-down menu.

While these options may work differently, there is some commonality. Functions you can accomplish for protected Exchange and SQL servers (and for no other protected machines) include:

This section includes the following topics specific to managing protected machines that use Exchange Server or SQL Server:

About protecting server clusters

In Rapid Recovery, server cluster protection is associated with the Rapid Recovery protected machines installed on individual cluster nodes (that is, individual machines in the cluster) and the Rapid Recovery Core, which protects those machines, all as if they were one composite machine.

You can easily configure a Rapid Recovery Core to protect and manage a cluster. In the Core Console, a cluster is organized as a separate entity, which acts as a container that includes the related nodes. For example, in the left navigation area, under the Protected Machines menu, protected clusters are listed. Directly below each cluster, the associated individual nodes or agent machines appear. Each of these is a protected machine on which the Rapid Recovery Agent software is installed. If you click on the cluster, the Summary page for the cluster appears in the Core Console.

At the Core and cluster levels, you can view information about the cluster, such as the list of related nodes and shared volumes. When showing information for a cluster in the Core Console, you can click Protected Nodes in the top navigation menu to view a summary table of individual nodes in the cluster. From that summary table, for each node, you can perform functions such as forcing a snapshot; performing a one-time export or setting up virtual standby; mounting or viewing recovery points; restoring from a recovery point; converting the cluster node to its own protected machine; or removing the node from protection. If the node is an Exchange or SQL Server, you will also see the option to truncate logs.

At the cluster level, you can also view corresponding Exchange and SQL cluster metadata for the nodes in the cluster. You can specify settings for the entire cluster and the shared volumes in that cluster.

If you click on any node in the cluster from the left navigation menu, the information displayed in the Core Console is specific to that node of the cluster. Here you can view information specific to that node, or configure settings just for that node.