Recovery assurance requirements and considerations

Data copy access jobs are only enabled on Enterprise Plus licensed appliances. If you are interested in this feature, contact your sales representative or email sales@unitrends.com.

NOTE  Upon trial license expiration, data copy access UI objects no longer display.

Supported asset types vary by where the DCA VMs reside:

●   On-virtual host DCA jobs can include Windows image-level backups, host-level backups of VMware or Hyper-V VMs, as well as any replicas located on a Hyper-V or ESXi host (VM replicas, Windows image-level replicas, or Windows file-level replicas).

●   On-box DCA jobs can include Windows image-level backups.

For more on these asset types, see Windows Image-level Backups Overview, Host-level Backups Overview, Instant recovery of Windows image-level backups, VM replicas, Windows image-level replicas, and Windows file-level replicas.

You must configure an isolated test network on your hypervisor prior to running tests and standing up instant labs. Failure to contain tests and instant labs within this VM network may allow them to interfere with your production VMs.

●   When creating a test network on a VMware host, do not assign a physical adapter to the standard switch.

●   When creating a test network on a Hyper-V server, use the internal virtual switch type.

Review the following requirements and considerations before including VMware VMs in your data copy access jobs:

●   All requirements for VM instant recovery as defined in Preparing for instant recovery must be met.

●   vSphere versions earlier than 5.5 are not supported.

●   The following must be installed or configured before taking the first backup intended for inclusion in data copy access jobs:

●   VMware Tools must be installed on the VM.

●   Powershell version 3.0 or later must be installed on VMs that are running Windows as a guest OS.

●   User Account Control must be disabled on VMs that are running Windows as a guest OS.

●   .NET framework version 2.0 or later must be installed on VMs that are running Windows as a guest OS.

●   Guest OS credentials must be configured for administrator-level privileges on the VM and added to the backup appliance. For further information on managing credentials, see Managing protected assets.

●   For Active Directory domain controllers, guest OS credentials must be configured to use the local system administrator account. A user that is part of the domain administrator group is not sufficient. To run NTDS tests, the local system administrator account is required.

Additional considerations:

●   Failover jobs can only be committed on hosts that are managed by a vCenter.

●   Re-IP functionality for Linux VMs requires ifconfig. ifconfig is not installed by default on minimal operating system versions. Be sure to install ifconfig to enable re-ip of these operating system versions by running this command:

●   Additional requirements must be met to enable re-IP functionality for Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 VMs. See DCA jobs for Win2K8 R2 may fail for details.

Review the following requirements and considerations before including Hyper-V VMs in your data copy access jobs:

●   All requirements for VM instant recovery as defined in Preparing for instant recovery must be met.

●    The following must be installed or configured before taking the first backup intended for inclusion in data copy access jobs:

●   The Unitrends agent must be installed on the Hyper-V server. The latest agent version is recommended, minimum supported version is 10.0.0-1 (see Installing the Windows agent).

●   The data copy access Hyper-V agent must be installed on the Hyper-V server (see Installing the data copy access Hyper-V agent).

●   Hyper-V Integration Services must be installed and updated.

●   Powershell version 3.0 or later must be installed on Windows VMs.

●   User Account Control must be set to minimum on Windows VMs.

●   .NET framework version 2.0 or later must be installed on Windows VMs.

●   Guest OS credentials must be configured for administrator-level privileges on the VM and added to the backup appliance. For further information on managing credentials, see Managing protected assets.

●   For Active Directory domain controllers, guest OS credentials must be configured to use the local system administrator account. A user that is part of the domain administrator group is not sufficient. To run NTDS tests, the local system administrator account is required.

Additional considerations:

●   If re-IP and custom test functionality are required, the data copy access Hyper-V agent must be installed on the Hyper-V server and its guest VMs. For instructions, see Installing the data copy access Hyper-V agent.

●   Re-IP and custom tests are not supported for Linux guests and Hyper-V/Windows Server versions earlier than 2012 R2.

●   Re-IP functionality for Linux VMs requires ifconfig. ifconfig is not installed by default on minimal operating system versions. Be sure to install ifconfig to enable re-ip of these operating system versions by running this command:

A VM replica created on a managed host cannot be moved to a host that is not managed by a vCenter. For further information, see VM replicas.

Windows file-level replicas on VMware:

●   Windows Server versions earlier than 2008 are not supported.

●   The host must be managed by a vCenter.

●   Data copy access jobs that include Windows replicas and span two hosts require both hosts to be managed by the same vCenter. Windows replicas cannot be moved across hosts that are not managed by the same vCenter.

●   If the Power On Timeout option is selected, it must be configured for longer than 20 minutes.

Windows file-level replicas on Hyper-V:

●   Powershell version 3.0 must be installed on Windows VMs.

●   If the Power On Timeout option is selected, it must be configured for longer than 20 minutes.

●   Hyper-V/Windows Server versions earlier than 2012 are not supported.

●   If re-IP and custom test functionality are required, the data copy access Hyper-V agent must be installed on the Windows asset from which the replica is created. For instructions, see Installing the data copy access Hyper-V agent

NOTE  Re-IP and custom tests are not supported for Windows replicas of Windows Server 2012 VMs hosted on Hyper-V/Windows Server 2012 R2 and later.