To have BackupEDGE back up to an D2D Device you must: 1 Prepare the removable storage device to accept backups.
2 Configure an AF Resource to mount and unmount the device on demand.
3 Configure an FSP Resource to read and write to the mounted device and associate it with the proper AF Resource.
4 Initialize the FSP Resource.
5 Select the FSP Resource from EDGEMENU or within a Schedule.
Initializing the FSP backup resource does NOT erase any data. If there are no current files in the backup directory, BackupEDGE will create a control file (named CTL) indicating that it is ready
to accept BackupEDGE archives. If BackupEDGE detects a control file, it will scan the directory
+ Edit Backup Schedule ---+ | Schedule Name: simple_job | | Time: [23:00 ] (14:58:46) Enabled: [X] | | Sequence: web2v.microlite.com:esequence/onsite | | Backup Domain: system | | Primary Resource: [Change] web2v.microlite.com:fsp!fsp0 | | | | +---+ January 2015 | | | Every Sunday of the week (None) | Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa | | | Every Monday of the week Master | M M 3 | | | Every Tuesday of the week Master | 4 M M M M M 10 | | | Every Wednesday of the week Master | 11 M M M M M 17 | | | Every Thursday of the week Master | 18 M M M M M 24 | | | Every Friday of the week Master | 25 M M M M M 31 | | | Every Saturday of the week (None) | | | +---+ | | | | Notify / Advanced: [Change] [Reset Dates] | | Mail Summary To: root Print Summary To: NONE | | Mail Failures To: NONE Print Failures To: NONE | |[Save] [Cancel]| +---+
for any current archives and re-build its index of available archives and their sizes. FSP backups cannot commence until the FSP Resource has been initialized one time.
Preparing the Storage Device
Microlite recommends that your removable hard disk contain a single filesystem that is mounted and unmounted only by BackupEDGE. To prepare the hard drive, the following steps are usually necessary:
1 Attach the device and make sure it is seen by the operating system. 2 Run FDISK, erase all partitions, and create a single primary partition. 3 Create a valid filesystem on the partition.
See “Storage Device Preparation Example (Linux)” on page 159 for more detailed information. See “Storage Device Preparation Example (OpenServer 6)” on page 162 for more detailed OpenServer 6 information.
See “Storage Device Preparation Example (OpenServer 5)” on page 165 for more detailed OpenServer 6 information.
Setting Up an Attached Filesystem Resources
The AF (Attached Filesystem) Resource is a handler for devices that must be mounted and unmounted prior to use, such as removable hard drives, flash memory cards, and so on. It is responsible for managing the entire removable medium. It knows how to mount and unmount it, etc. You cannot write a backup directly to the AF resource.
Setting up the AF resource requires using edgemenu:Admin->Define Resources. Select ‘[NEW]’,
then change the type to ‘Attached Filesystem’ (use the down-arrow key), and change the
resource name to something suitable (the default is ‘af0’ and is fine).
NOTE: Never place any other (non-BackupEDGE-created) files in the BackupEDGE directory on the FSP Resource. Never manually remove any BackupEDGE files. The only way to
manipulate these files other than from within EDGEMENU without corrupting the control file database is by using the edge.segadm command. See “EDGE.SEGADM” on page 317 for more
information on using this program.
NOTE: The filesystem MUST be of the same type as an existing, always mounted filesystem (like the root filesystem) on the running system. This is so that valid modules needed to mount it can be picked up by the disaster recovery media. For instance, on a Linux system if all your regular filesystems are ext3, do not create a reiserfs filesystem on the removable media.
Unedited AF Resource.
Usually, the only two fields you must modify are the Mount Device Node and the
Exclude Node. The other fields, Mount Dir, Mount Command, and Unmount Command, will
probably work without modification. The default mount directory is in a BackupEDGE directory that gets automatically excluded from backups, and should not be changed.
The Mount Device Node is the device node that you will use to mount this attached filesystem,
such as ‘/dev/sdb1’.
The Exclude Node is the device node that will be excluded by RecoverEDGE during disk
preparation for disaster recovery. The idea is that you do not want RecoverEDGE re-creating the filesystem on your removable hard drive that previously held the backup you wanted to restore from.
The Exclude Node should be the ‘whole disk’ node, even if you are mounting only a partition of
it. For example, if the Mount Device Node is ‘/dev/sdb1’, you would want to use ‘/dev/sdb’ as
the Exclude Node.
Completed AF Resource.
Note that this means you cannot use one partition of a removable hard drive as a regular
filesystem and another for BackupEDGE. If you do this, disaster recovery might not recover the other filesystem automatically, since the whole disk will be excluded. If you do not list the whole disk, the BackupEDGE partition might be erased during recovery. Generally, this is not
restrictive because if you are doing disaster recovery with removable media, it must be possible to remove the media physically from the system. If you do not, then you stand a chance of losing your backups to whatever disaster that required your system to be recovered in the first place!
+ BackupEDGE Resource Information ---+ ¦- General Resource Information ---¦ ¦Resource Type Attached Filesystem ¦ ¦Resource Name [af0 ] Change as appropriate ¦ ¦Description [Attached Filesystem Resource] ¦ ¦Changer Assoc [Standalone Device] ¦ ¦Interface [Other ] ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦- Attached Filesystem Information ---¦ ¦Mount Dir [/usr/lib/edge/system/mnt/af0 ] ¦ ¦Mount Device Node [/dev/null ] ¦ ¦Mount Command [/etc/mount %m %M ] ¦ ¦Unmount Command [/etc/umount %M ] ¦ ¦Exclude Node [ ] ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦[Next] [Prev] [Cancel]¦ +---+
+ BackupEDGE Resource Information ---+ ¦- General Resource Information ---¦ ¦Resource Type Attached Filesystem ¦ ¦Resource Name [af0 ] Change as appropriate ¦ ¦Description [Attached Filesystem Resource] ¦ ¦Changer Assoc [Standalone Device] ¦ ¦Interface [Other ] ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦- Attached Filesystem Information ---¦ ¦Mount Dir [/usr/lib/edge/system/mnt/af0 ] ¦ ¦Mount Device Node [/dev/sdb1 ] ¦ ¦Mount Command [/etc/mount %m %M ] ¦ ¦Unmount Command [/etc/umount %M ] ¦ ¦Exclude Node [/dev/sdb ] ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦[Next] [Prev] [Cancel]¦ +---+
You may modify the Mount Dir to cause BackupEDGE to mount the Attached Filesystem
elsewhere. If you do, you must also tell BackupEDGE to exclude it from backup, else a Master
Backup will traverse into that directory. You can do this by adding the mount directory to /etc/edge.exclude. Note that the default mount directory does NOT require this, since BackupEDGE will exclude it by default.
The Mount Command and Unmount Command fields should be whatever commands are used to
mount and unmount the attached filesystem, respectively. They accept the substitutions ‘%m’ for
the mount device node, and ‘%M’ for the mount directory.
Press [Next] to save the AF resource.
Setting Up a FileSystem Partition Resource
After you have saved the AF resource, you must create one or more Filesystem Partition (FSP) resources to write to it. Setting up an FSP resource is very simple. Use
edgemenu:Admin->Define Resources to create a Resource. Select ‘[NEW]’ to do this. In the
popup box, be sure to change the type to ‘Filesystem Partition’ (use the right and left arrow
keys), and optionally change the resource name (the default is ‘fsp0’).
All of the fields in this form have excellent defaults except “AF Association”. Press [Enter] on this field and select the AF Resource that will be handling the mounting and un-mounting of the filesystem. This should be changed to the reflect This tells BackupEDGE to make sure that the filesystem is mounted before trying to access the FSP.
‘Dir Suffix’ is the directory where the backups will be saved, and should typically be left at the
default. When used with an AF Resource, this suffix is appended to the Mount Dir (mount directory) in the AF Resource.
‘Segment Size’, controls the maximum file size that BackupEDGE will create. The default is
slightly less than 1GB. Note that this does not limit the maximum archive size; BackupEDGE will automatically split the archive up into multiple files (segments) if needed. Generally, you will
NOTE: AF Resources can be problematic with hot plug devices. Many hot plug devices change device names between hot plugs, and there is no reliable way to search for the correct device, especially in cases where, for instance, more than one USB hard drive is used as a backup device, or more than one USB device is plugged in at a time. Please do extensive testing before deploying solutions using AF Resources.
+ BackupEDGE Resource Information ---+ ¦- General Resource Information ---¦ ¦Resource Type FS Partition ¦ ¦Resource Name [fsp0 ] Change as appropriate ¦ ¦Description [Directory Resource ] ¦ ¦AF Association [asusp1:af0] ¦ ¦Interface [Other ] ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦- FS Partition Information ---¦ ¦Dir Suffix [/fsp0 ] ¦ ¦Segment Size (K) [1048544 ] [X] Lazy Reclamation ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦- Default Backup Properties ---¦ ¦Quota [120G ] [S] Compression Level [5] ¦ ¦Edge Block Size [64 ] [Y] Double Buffering ¦ ¦[Next] [Prev] [Cancel]¦ +---+
NOTE: BackupEDGE handles concurrent access to an FSP (or to multiple FSPs that share one
not know (or care) about this, as it will be handled for you automatically. You do not need to alter the ‘Segment Size’ field in most cases.
‘Lazy Reclmation’ controls the behavior of space reclamation (deleting archives) on the FSP
media. See “Space Reclamation” on page 153 for additional information. The default behaviour is
Enabled.
Do not confuse ‘Segment Size’ with ‘Quota’. ‘Quota’ limits the total space consumed by all BackupEDGE archives on this resource. (For FSPs that refer to removable media devices, as
described below, the ‘Quota’ limits the amount of space that will be used on any single medium.)
In other words, if the ‘Quota’ is 100GB, then no more than 100GB will be written by
BackupEDGE to this FSP until something is erased, or a new medium is loaded. This is useful if
one AF (Attached Filesystem, see below) is split into multiple FSPs, and you want to make sure that no single FSP consumes the whole AF. It should typically be set at the size of the filesystem on the device.
You may choose any [S]oftware compression level from 1 to 9, or choose N for no compression. Do not attempt to set compression to [H]ardware.
Initialize the FSP Resource
When you press [Next] to save the resource, you will be asked if you want to ‘Initialize’ it. You
must let BackupEDGE initialize the resource. This mounts the filesystem, creates the directory and adds a control file named CTL in the destination directory. To initialize at a later time, use edgemenu:Admin->Initialize Medium. Note that initializing the resource will not erase any
existing backups. If existing backups exits, the CTL file, which contains information about the
individual archive segments, will be re-calculated.