Rapid Recovery 6.3 - User Guide

For typical environments, the top left side of the Core Console is branded with the full product name, including the Quest logo. Clicking anywhere on the branding area results in the opening of a new tab in the web browser, displaying product documentation on the Support website.

The button bar, which appears to the right of the branding area, contains buttons accessible from anywhere in the Core Console. These buttons launch wizards to accomplish common groups of tasks such as protecting a machine; performing a restore from a recovery point; creating, attaching, or importing an archive; or replicating from this source Core to a target Core.

Each button in the button bar is further described in the Button bar table below.

Shows how many jobs are currently running. This value is dynamic based on the system state. When you click the drop-down menu, you see a status summary for all jobs currently running. By clicking the X for any job, you can choose to cancel that job.

The Help menu includes the following options:

Help. Links to in-product help, which opens in a separate browser window.

Documentation. Links to Rapid Recovery technical documentation on the Quest website.

Interactive training. Links to interactive web-based training on the Quest website.

Support. Links to the product support page for Rapid Recovery on the Quest website.

Submit an idea. If you have suggestions for features or enhancements, select this option to open the Quest ideation portal, where you can quickly and easily describe your ideas and have them reviewed by product managers for potential inclusion in a future release of Rapid Recovery.

About. Opens the About Rapid Recovery dialog box. Information here includes the Rapid Recovery component; version information; the Core ID; a hyperlink for third-party contributions; and a description of the software.

The current time of the machine running the Rapid Recovery Core service appears at the top right of the Core Console. When you hover your mouse over the time, the server date also appears. This is the date and time recorded by the system for events such as logging, scheduling, and reporting. For example, when applying protection schedules, the time displayed on the Core Console is used. This is true even if the time zone is different on the database server or on the client machine where the browser is running.

The icon bar includes a graphic representation for major functions accessible in the Core Console. It appears on the left side of the UI, directly below the branding area. Clicking the appropriate item in the icon bar takes you to the corresponding section of the UI where you can manage that function.

Each of the icons in the icon bar is further described in the Icon bar table below.

The left navigation area appears on the left side of the user interface, below the icon bar.

• The left navigation area contains the text filter and the Machines menu.
• If you have added replication to this Core, then this area contains a Replicated Machines menu.
• If you have any machines that were removed from protection but for which recovery points were saved, then this area contains a Recovery Points Only menu.
• If you added any custom groups, then this area contains a Custom Group menu.
• If you attached an archive, then this area contains an attached archives menu.

You can toggle the appearance of the left navigation area on and off. This is helpful when you need to see more content in the main navigation area of the UI. To hide this section, click the gray border between the left navigation and main navigation areas. To show this UI element once more, click the gray border again.

Each of the elements in the left navigation area are further described in the Left navigation menu table below.

The Protect button launches the Protect Machine Wizard, from which you can protect a single machine in the Rapid Recovery Core . Additionally, for other protection options, you can access the drop-down menu next to this button, which includes the following options.

• The Protect Machine option is another method to launch the Protect Machine Wizard to protect a single machine.
• The Protect Cluster option allows you to connect to a server cluster.
• The Protect Multiple Machines option opens the Protect Multiple Machines Wizard to allow you to protect two or more machines simultaneously.
• The Deploy Agent Software option lets you install the Rapid Recovery Agentsoftware to one or more machines simultaneously. This function uses the Deploy Agent Software Wizard.

The Restore button opens the Restore Machine Wizard to allow you to restore data from recovery points saved from a protected machine.

Additionally for other restore or export options, you can access the drop-down menu next to this button, which includes the following options.

• The Restore Machine option is another method to launch the Restore Machine Wizard to restore data.
• The Mount Recovery Point option launches the Mount Wizard, which lets you mount recovery points from a protected machine.
• The VM Export option opens the Export Wizard. From this wizard you can create a virtual machine from recovery points saved in the Rapid Recovery Core. You have the option of creating a one-time export, or you can define parameters for a VM that is continually updated after every snapshot for a protected machine.

The Archive button opens the Archive Wizard. From this wizard you can create a one-time archive from selected recovery points, or you can create an archive and continually save to that archive based on a schedule you define.

Additionally for other archive options, you can access the drop-down menu next to this button, which includes the following options.

• The Create Archive option is another method to launch the Create Archive Wizard to create a one-time archive or to archive continually.
• The Import Archive option launches the Import Archive Wizard, which lets you import an archive.
• The Attach Archive option mounts an archive so you can read the contents as a file system.

The icon bar includes a graphic representation for major functions accessible in the Core Console. Clicking the appropriate item takes you to the corresponding section of the user interface where you can manage that function. Icons in the icon bar include:

Home. Click the Home icon to navigate to the Core Home page.

Replication. Click the Replication icon to view or manage incoming or outgoing replication.

Virtual Standby. Click the Virtual Standby icon to export information from a recovery point to a bootable virtual machine.

Events. Click the Events icon to view a log of all system events related to the Rapid Recovery Core .

Settings. Click the Settings icon to view or manage settings for the Rapid Recovery Core. You can back up or restore Core configuration settings. You can set general settings to control ports or display aspects. Additionally, you can configure settings in the following categories: automatic updates; nightly jobs; transfer queue settings; client timeout settings; DVM deduplication cache settings; Replay engine settings; and deploy settings. You can view or change database connections; SMTP server settings; cloud storage accounts; and change font settings for reports. You can set SQL attachability settings; Core job settings; license settings; SNMP settings; and vSphere settings.

More. Click the More icon to access other important features. Each has its own icon, listed below.

System Information. Click System Information to display data about the Rapid Recovery Core server. You can see the host name, OS, architecture and memory for the Core. You can see the name displayed on the Core Console. You can also view the fully qualified domain name of the Core on your network, and the path for your cache metadata and deduplication caches.

For more information about changing the display name, see Understanding system information for the Core.

For more information about deduplication cache, see Understanding deduplication cache and storage locations.

For information on adjusting the settings, see Configuring DVM deduplication cache settings.

The Virtual Environment option appears in the (More) menu only if your Core is installed on a Hyper-V or vCenter/ESXi virtual machine.

Clicking this option results in the Virtual Environments page, which provides options for managing credentials, storage locations, repositories, and volumes for Hyper-V and ESXi virtual environments.

This page has three sub-pages (Virtual Storage, Attached Disks, and Provisioning), from which you can accomplish the following tasks, respectively:

Manage hypervisor credentials. On the Virtual Storage sub-page, you can manage the credentials for Hyper-V or vCenter/ESXi hypervisor hosts added to or protected on your Core. If you add a hypervisor host and enter your credentials, Rapid Recovery caches them for future use.

Manage hypervisor host storage locations. On the Virtual Storage sub-page, once one or more protected hypervisor hosts appear on this page, you can manage storage locations. You can see and set a path to a physical folder on your hypervisor (for Hyper-V), or a path for your data store (for ESXi). You can expand or contract the view of storage locations defined to see all disks; expand again to show snapshots on the base disks, and which is currently active and mounted.

Monitor virtual disks. On this page, you can see disks attached to your virtual environments. From the Attached Disks sub-page, you can view and monitor all virtual disks currently attached to the virtual machine, including the subset of disks not specifically defined as storage locations in the Virtual Storage sub-page.

Define repositories or virtual volumes. On the Provisioning sub-page, you can create a new repository for your Hyper-V or ESXi protected machines. You can also add an empty volume for your virtual environments.

Archives. Rapid Recovery lets you manage archives of information from the Core. You can view information about scheduled or attached archives, and you can add, check, or import archives.

Mounts. Lets you view and dismount local mounts, and view and disconnect remote mounts.

Boot CDs. Lets you manage boot CDs, typically used for a bare metal restore (BMR). You can create a boot CD ISO image, delete an existing image, or click the path for the image to open or save it.

Repositories. Lets you view and manage repositories associated with your Core.

Encryption Keys. Lets you view, manage, import, or add encryption keys that you can apply to protected machines. If not being used, you can delete encryption keys.

Cloud Accounts. Lets you view and manage connections between your Core and Cloud storage accounts.

File Search. Lets you search through recovery points for specific files that you can then restore to a local disk.

Retention Policy. Lets you view and modify the Core retention policy, including how long to keep recovery points before rolling them up and eventually deleting them.

Credentials Vault. Lets you access and manage user accounts used within the Rapid Recovery Core Console. Easily update credentials or save time entering them when working with your Core.

Notifications. Lets you configure notifications about Core events, define SMTP server settings to email notifications, and set repetition reduction to suppress repeated notifications about the same event.

Mail Restore. Lets you search through Exchange server databases to locate and restore mail messages.

Downloads. You can download the Agent software web installer, the Local Mount Utility, or MIB files containing event information to use in an SNMP browser.

Reports. Lets you access Core reports or schedule reports to generate on an ongoing basis.

The PROTECTED MACHINES menu appears as the first menu in the left navigation area, if one or more machines is protected in your Core.

If you click a specific machine name shown in this pane, a Summary page appears, showing summary information for the selected machine. For more information on what you can accomplish on the Summary page, see Viewing summary information for a protected machine.

If you see the name of another Rapid Recovery Core as a top-level navigation menu, then the Core on which you are viewing the Core Console is a target Core. The menu is named after the source Core, and each machine listed under it represents a machine from that source Core that is replicated on this target.

If this target Core replicates recovery points from more than one source Core, each source Core appears as its own navigable menu in the left navigation area.

If you click a specific machine name shown in a replicated machines menu, a Summary page appears, showing summary information for the selected replicated machine.

For more information about replication, see Replication.

If you see a RECOVERY POINTS ONLY menu, your Core retains recovery points for a machine it once protected or replicated. While that machine is no longer continuing to capture new snapshots, the recovery points previously captured on your Core remain. These recovery points can be used for file-level recovery, but cannot be used for bare metal restore, for restoring entire volumes, or for adding snapshot data.

If you created any custom groups, a custom group menu appears in the navigation menu. Custom groups are logical containers used to group machines together (for example, by function, or organization, or by geographic location). Custom groups can contain heterogeneous objects (protected machines, replicated machines, and so on). You can define the label for a custom group; like other menus, the name appears in the menu in all upper-case letters.

You can perform actions for like items in a custom group by clicking the arrow to the right of the custom group title. For example, you can force a snapshot for every protected machine in a custom group.

For more information about creating and managing custom groups, see Understanding custom groups.

The PROTECTED MACHINES menu appears in the left navigation area of the UI. In this menu, you can view any protected machines, protected clusters, or replicated machines configured in your Core. If you have any protected groups or recovery point-only machines, these also appear as part of this menu.

If you click the Protected Machines menu label, a Protected Machines page appears, showing onone page all of the machines protected on this Core. For more information, see Viewing the Protected Machines menu.

The default view for this menu is expanded. You can contract or expand the view for any of the protected machines in your Core by clicking the [Contract menu] and [Expand menu] arrows on the left side of this menu label, respectively. The following list shows the various icons that can appear in the Protected Machines menu by machine type:

A simple machine icon portrays a physical machine or a protected VM with Rapid Recovery Agent software installed.

A hollow triple-machine icon portrays an VMware vCenter/ESXi host..

A multi-machine icon portrays a protected cluster.

A single-machine icon with a small horizontal line above portrays a single node in a cluster.

A double-machine icon filled with two short horizontal lines and a dot portrays a Scale-Out File Server (SOFS) cluster protected in your Core.

A single-machine icon filled with two short horizontal lines and a dot portrays a node in a protected SOFS cluster.

For each replicated machine, the icon indicates the type of machine being replicated. For example, if replicating a single machine, the icon shows one machine. If replicating a server cluster, the icon represents a cluster.

You can collapse or expand the view for any of these replicated machines by clicking the arrow on the left side of this menu label.

From the Replicated Machines menu, you can perform actions on all replicated machines.

If you click the Replicated Machines menu, the Machines page appears. This page shows all machines protected on another (source) Core that are replicated to this target Core. For more information, see Viewing replicated machines from the navigation menu.

You can collapse or expand the view for any of the recovery points-only machines by clicking the arrow on the left side of this menu label.

From the Recovery Points Only menu, you can remove the recovery points for all the recovery-points only machines on this Core.

If you click the Recovery Points Only menu, the Machines page appears, showing the machines from which the recovery points were saved. For more information, see Viewing the Recovery Points Only menu.

You can collapse or expand the view for any of the custom groups in your Core by clicking the arrow on the left side of this menu label.

From the Custom Groups menu, you can perform actions for like items in the group.

If you click the Custom Groups menu, the Machines page appears, showing a pane for each of the Rapid Recovery objects that appear in your group: protected machines, replicated machines, and recovery points-only machines. For more information, see Viewing the Custom Groups menu.

Lets you search for a specific item within each category. Available for tasks only.

To narrow your results, you can enter a date at which to begin searching. Available for tasks only.

To narrow your results, you can enter a date at which to stop searching. Available for tasks only.

Each icon represents a different job status. For alerts and tasks, clicking one of the icons lets you filter the list by that status, essentially generating a report. Clicking the icon a second time removes the filter for that status. You can filter by more than one status. Statuses include:

• Active. A job that is in progress.
• Queued. A job that is waiting for another job to complete before it can initiate.
• Waiting. A job waiting for your approval or completion, such as a seed drive. (For more information about seed drives, see Replication.)
• Complete. A job that completed successfully.
• Failed. A job that failed and did not complete.

This button adds services jobs to the list of jobs. When you click this icon, a smaller service icon appears on each status icon, which lets you filter by service jobs that have those statuses (if any exist). Examples of services jobs include deleting index files or removing a machine from protection.

The drop-down list includes the formats to which you can export the event report. Available for tasks only. It includes the following formats:

• PDF
• HTML
• CSV
• XLS
• XLSX

Converts the event report to the format you selected. Available for tasks only.

Shows the status for the task, alert, or journal item. Available for alerts or journal items, click the header to filter the results by status.

Name is available for tasks only. This text field lists the task type that completed for this protected machine. Examples include transfer of volumes, maintaining repository, rolling up, performing mountability checks, performing checksum checks, and so on.

Available for tasks, alerts, and journal items. Shows the date and time when the job or task began.

Available for tasks only. Shows the date and time when the task completed.

Available for tasks only. Opens the Monitor Active Task dialog box, so you can view details of the specific job or task. These details include an ID for the job, rate at which the Core transferred data (if relevant), elapsed time for the job to complete, total work in amount of gigabytes, and any child tasks associated with the job.

Shows information about the protected machine, system information, volumes, processors, network adapters, and IP addresses for this machine.

For more information, see Viewing system information for a protected machine.

From the Local Mounts pane, you can view or dismount volumes mounted locally. From the Remote Mounts pane, you can view or dismount volumes mounted using the Local Mount Utility.

For information on dismounting volumes, see Dismounting recovery points.

For information on mounting a recovery point locally, see Mounting a recovery point or Mounting a recovery point volume on a Linux machine, respectively.

Lets you specify a retention policy for the selected machine. You can choose to use the Core's default policy, or you can differentiate the retention policy for this machine only. For more information, see Customizing retention policy settings for a protected machine.

Lets you specify a custom notification group for events pertaining to the selected machine. This does not change the notifications already set on the Core. For more information, see Configuring notification groups.