If you have already installed the Rapid Recovery Agent software on the machine you want to protect, but have not restarted it yet, restart the machine now.
NOTE: Unless using agentless protection on a VMware or ESXi host, or a Hyper-V host, the machine you want to protect must have the Rapid Recovery Agent software installed in order to be protected. You can choose to install the Agent software prior to this procedure, or you can deploy the software to the target machine as a part of completing the Protect Machine Wizard.
NOTE: For more information on agentless protection and its restrictions, see Understanding Rapid Snap for Virtual.
NOTE: For more information on installing the Agent software, see “Installing the Rapid Recovery Agent software” in the Rapid Recovery License Portal Installation and Upgrade Guide.
If the Agent software is not installed prior to protecting a machine, you will not be able to select specific volumes for protection as part of this wizard. In this case, by default, all volumes on the agent machine will be included for protection.
Rapid Recovery supports the protection and recovery of machines configured with EISA partitions. Support is also extended to Windows 8 and 8.1, and Windows 2012 and 2012 R2 machines that use Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE). |
To protect multiple machines using one process simultaneously, see About protecting multiple machines.
The protection process includes optional steps you can access if you select an advanced configuration. Advanced options include repository functions and encryption. For example, you can specify an existing Rapid Recovery repository to save snapshots, or create a new repository. You can also specify an existing encryption key (or add a new encryption key) to apply to the data saved to the Core for this machine. For more information about encryption keys, see Encryption keys.
The workflow of the protection wizard may differ slightly based on your environment. For example, if the Rapid Recovery Agent software is installed on the machine you want to protect, you will not be prompted to install it from the wizard. Likewise, if a repository already exists on the Core, you will not be prompted to create one.
CAUTION: Rapid Recovery does not support bare metal restores (BMRs) of Linux machines with ext2 boot partitions. Any BMR performed on a machine with this type of partition results in a machine that does not start. If you want to be able to perform a BMR on this machine in the future, you must convert any ext2 partitions to ext3 or ext4 before you begin protecting and backing up the machine. |
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Optionally, if you do not wish to see the Welcome page for the Protect Machine Wizard in the future, select the option Skip this Welcome page the next time the wizard opens. |
The Connection page appears.
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On the Connection page, enter the information about the machine to which you want to connect as described in the following table, and then click Next. |
The host name or IP address of the machine that you want to protect. | |
The port number on which the Rapid Recovery Core communicates with the Agent on the machine. | |
If the Upgrade Agent page appears next in the wizard, that means that an older version of the Agent software exists on the machine you want to protect.
NOTE: The Agent software must be installed on the machine you want to protect, and that machine must be restarted, before it can back up to the Core. To have the installer reboot the protected machine, select the option After installation, restart the machine automatically (recommended) before clicking Next. |
5. |
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To deploy the new version of the Agent software (matching the version for the Rapid Recovery Core), select Upgrade the Agent to the latest version of the software. |
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To continue protecting the machine without updating the Agent software version, clear the option Upgrade the Agent to the latest version of the software. |
6. |
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Optionally, on the Protection page, if you want a name other than the IP address to display in the Rapid Recovery Core console for this protected machine, then in the Display Name field, type a name in the dialog box. |
You can enter up to 64 characters. Do not use the special characters described in the topic prohibited characters . Additionally, do not begin the display name with any of the character combinations described in the topic prohibited phrases .
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To use the default protection schedule, in the Schedule Settings option, select Default protection. |
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If you selected a Typical configuration for the Protect Machine Wizard and specified default protection, then click Finish to confirm your choices, close the wizard, and protect the machine you specified. |
The first time protection is added for a machine, a base image (that is, a snapshot of all the data in the protected volumes) will transfer to the repository on the Rapid Recovery Core following the schedule you defined, unless you specified to initially pause protection.
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If you selected a Typical configuration for the Protect Machine Wizard and specified custom protection, then click Next to set up a custom protection schedule. For details on defining a custom protection schedule, see Creating a custom protection schedule from a wizard in Simple Mode. |
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If you selected Advanced configuration for the Protect Machine Wizard, and default protection, then click Next and proceed to Step 14 to see repository and encryption options. |
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If you selected Advanced configuration for the Protect Machine Wizard and specified custom protection, then click Next and proceed to Step 11 to choose which volumes to protect. |
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On the Protection Volumes page, select which volumes you want to protect. If any volumes are listed that you do not want to include in protection, click in the Check column to clear the selection. Then click Next. |
11. |
On the Protection Schedule page, define a custom protection schedule and then click Next. For details on defining a custom protection schedule, see Creating a custom protection schedule from a wizard in Simple Mode. |
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Select Use an existing repository. |
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Click Next. |
The Encryption page appears. Skip to Step 13 to optionally define encryption.
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If you want to create a repository, select Create a Repository, and then complete the following steps. |
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On the Repository, enter the information described in the following table. |
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Click Add Storage Location to define the specific storage location or volume for the repository. This volume should be a primary storage location. |
CAUTION: Define a dedicated folder within the root for the storage location for your repository. Do not specify the root location. For example, use E:\Repository\, not E:\. If the repository that you are creating in this step is later removed, all files at the storage location of your repository are deleted. If you define your storage location at the root, all other files in the volume (e.g., E:\) are deleted, which could result in catastrophic data loss. |
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Click Add Storage Location to define the specific storage location or volume for the repository. This volume should be a primary storage location. |
4. |
In the Storage Location area, specify how to add the file for the storage location. You can choose to add a locally attached storage volume (such as direct attached storage, a storage area network, or network attached storage). You could also specify a storage volume on a Common Internet File System (CIFS) shared location. |
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Select Add file on local disk to specify a local machine, and then enter the information as described in the following table. |
Enter the location for storing the protected data. For example, type X:\Repository\Data. | |
Enter the location for storing the protected metadata. For example, type X:\Repository\Metadata. |
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Or, select Add file on CIFS share to specify a network share location, and then enter the information as described in the following table. |
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In the Storage Configuration area, click More Details and enter the details for the storage location as described in the following table. |
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Set the value to one of the following:
If set to Off, Rapid Recovery controls the caching. If set to Sync, Windows controls the caching as well as the synchronous input/output. | |||||||||
Specify the number of bytes you want each sector to include. The default value is 512. | |||||||||
Specify the average number of bytes per record. The default value is 8192. |
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Click Next. |
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Encryption key fields appear on the Encryption page.
NOTE: If you enable encryption, it will be applied to data for all protected volumes for this machine.
You can change encryption settings later from the Rapid Recovery Core Console.
For more information about encryption, see the topic Encryption keys. |
CAUTION: Rapid Recovery uses AES 256-bit encryption in the Cipher Block Chaining (CBC) mode with 256-bit keys. While using encryption is optional, Quest highly recommends that you establish an encryption key, and that you protect the passphrase you define. Store the passphrase in a secure location as it is critical for data recovery. Without a passphrase, data recovery is not possible. |
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If you want to encrypt this protected machine using an encryption key that is already defined on this Rapid Recovery Core, select Encrypt data using an existing Encryption key, and then select the appropriate key from the drop-down menu. Proceed to the next step. |
Enter the passphrase used to control access. Best practice is to avoid special characters listed above. Record the passphrase in a secure location. Quest Support cannot recover a passphrase. Once you create an encryption key and apply it to one or more protected machines, you cannot recover data if you lose the passphrase. | |
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The first time protection is added for a machine, a base image (that is, a snapshot of all the data in the protected volumes) will transfer to the repository on the Rapid Recovery Core following the schedule you defined, unless you specified to initially pause protection.
This topic describes how to add a cluster for protection in Rapid Recovery . When you add a cluster to protection, you need to specify the host name or IP address of the cluster, the cluster application, or one of the cluster nodes or machines that includes the Rapid Recovery Agent software.
For information about setting up repositories, see Understanding repositories.
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From the Rapid Recovery Core Console, click the Protect button drop-down menu, and then click Protect Cluster. |
The host name or IP address of the cluster, the cluster application, or one of the cluster nodes. | |||
The port number on the machine on which the Rapid Recovery Core communicates with the Agent. | |||
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If you do not want protection to begin immediately after completing this procedure, select Initially pause protection. |
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To customize settings for an individual node, next to the node that you want to customize, click Settings, and then click Function next to the relevant volume. |
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To customize settings for the cluster, click the Settings button at the bottom of the dialog box, and then click Function next to the relevant volume. |
For more information about customizing nodes, see Protecting nodes in a cluster.
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This task requires that you first protect a cluster. For more information, see Protecting a cluster.
This topic describes how to protect the data on a cluster node or machine that has a Rapid Recovery Agent installed. This procedure lets you add individual nodes to protection that you may have omitted when you protected a cluster.
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In the Rapid Recovery Core Console, under Protected Machine, click the cluster with the nodes that you want to protect. |
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A drop-down list of nodes in the cluster available for protection. | |
The port number on which the Rapid Recovery Core communicates with the Agent on the node. | |
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If you do not want protection to begin immediately after completing this procedure, select Initially pause protection. |
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To customize settings for an individual volume, next to the volume that you want to customize, click Function next to the relevant volume. |
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The procedure for creating a custom protection schedule from within a protection wizard is identical to the procedure for creating a protection schedule for an existing machine in Simple Mode. Protection schedules created in a wizard or in Simple Mode are not saved as templates. To create templates or multiple protection schedules, see Creating multiple protection schedule periods in Advanced Mode. Complete the steps in this procedure to create custom schedules for using Rapid Recovery to back up data from protected machines.
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If using a protection wizard (Protect Machine, Protect Multiple Machines, Protecting a Cluster), on the Protection page of the wizard, select Custom protection, and then click Next. |
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To set a protection period that runs on set days and at specified times, select Periods, and then continue to Step 3. |
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To set a specific time to back up the machine every day, select Daily protection time, and then continue to Step 7. |
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To customize snapshots for peak and off-peak business hours, complete the following steps: set an optimal interval for the peak range, select Take snapshots for the remaining time, and then set an off-peak interval by doing the following: |
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In the Every X minutes box, enter an interval in minutes for how often Rapid Recovery should create recovery points during this span of peak business hours. |
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To schedule snapshots during off-peak business hours, select Take snapshots for the rest of the time. |
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In the Every X minutes box, enter an interval in minutes for how often Rapid Recovery should create recovery points during this span of off-peak business hours. |
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To set a single time of day for a single backup to occur daily, select Daily protection time and then enter a time in format HH:MM AM. For example, to do a daily backup at 9:00 PM, enter 09:00 PM. |
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After you pause protection from the wizard, it remains paused until you explicitly resume it. Once you resume protection, backups occur based on the schedule you established. For more information on resuming protection, see Pausing and resuming protection.
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When you are satisfied with changes made to your protection schedule, click Finish or Next, as appropriate. |
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