Appliance Disaster Recovery (DR)

Use the following table to record appliance information needed to perform DR. You can find this information in the appliance UI on the Edit Appliance dialog (select Configure > Appliances > Edit and view the General and License tabs).

Appliance information for DR	Value
Appliance Name
Appliance IP
Asset Tag
Feature String
License Key
Encryption	If backups are encrypted, you will need the encryption passphrase or encryption key to recover your data.

You can recover your appliance and its last backups from a hot or cold backup copy. Choosing which to use is based on your particular needs, but the most effective disaster recovery strategy requires that these choices have been made well in advance.

NOTE  Disaster recovery from a tape backup copy is not supported.

Appliance metadata (its system state) is automatically included in each hot and cold backup copy. This metadata contains information such as protected assets, job schedules, storage configuration, and other appliance settings. Recovering this metadata restores an appliance in the event of a disaster. Be sure to run backup copy jobs at regular intervals to ensure you have a recent copy that you can use for appliance DR.

A fresh appliance to recover to must be available. This DR target appliance can be a:

●    Recovery Series or Recovery MAX appliance — Use a new or re-imaged appliance. If you need to re-image an appliance, see How to reimage a Unitrends appliance for instructions.

●   Unitrends Backup virtual appliance — Deploy a new Unitrends Backup appliance.

The following requirements must be met before you perform appliance DR:

●   You must freshly image or deploy the DR target appliance and ensure it runs the latest version of the Unitrends software.

●   The DR target appliance must have local network access enabled:

●   If you can log in to the appliance UI by entering https://<applianceIPaddress>/ui/ in a browser on the local network, access is enabled.

●   If you cannot log in and receive the message Managed by UniView, local network access is disabled. Enable local network access as described in Disable or enable local network access to an appliance.

●   The operating system of the target appliance must be the same version as the original (failed) appliance or a higher version than the original (failed) appliance. For example, you cannot recover a failed CentOS 7 appliance to a CentOS 6 target appliance. To check the appliance OS version, select ? > About in the appliance UI:

●   The DR target appliance must be set up and configured on the network.
See the applicable guide below for instructions:

●   Quick Start Guide for Gen 10 Recovery Series Appliances

●   Quick Start Guide for Unitrends MSP Recovery MAX Appliances

●   Quick Start Guide for ION and ION+ Appliances

●   Deployment Guide for Unitrends Backup on VMware

●   Deployment Guide for Unitrends Backup on Hyper-V

●   Deployment Guide for Unitrends Backup on Nutanix AHV

●   Deployment Guide for Unitrends Backup on Citrix XenServer

●   Deployment Guide for Unitrends Backup in Microsoft Azure

●   The DR target appliance must have a minimum of 200GB of backup storage space available or as much storage as the original appliance, whichever is greater.

●   You must have a hot or cold backup copy from which to recover. (DR from tape backup copy is not supported.)

Additional DR considerations are listed here. You make choices during the DR process. It is best to consider your options before you start the DR procedure.

●   During DR you will choose whether to retain the DR target appliance's storage settings or to recover the storage settings from the original (failed) appliance. For details on each option, see Selecting storage configuration during DR.

●   If encryption was configured on the original appliance, you must configure encryption on the DR target appliance before you start the DR procedure. You must configure encryption to use the encryption passphrase of the original appliance. For details, see Encryption.

●   During DR you will choose a storage target where backups are imported:

●   For Recovery Series and Recovery MAX physical appliances — Accept the default Internal storage target (this is the only storage target).

●   For Unitrends Backup virtual appliances — If you want to import backups to a different storage target, you must add the storage to the target appliance before you start the DR procedure. See About adding backup storage to a Unitrends Backup appliance for details.

●   The DR procedure does not recover any Windows replicas or VM replicas. You must create new replicas after running the DR procedure.

●   The DR procedure does not recover any SLA policies. Any backup and backup copy schedules created by SLA policies are recovered, but you must recreate SLA policies after running the DR procedure.

During the DR procedure, you are asked whether to retain the storage settings on the DR target appliance or to recover storage settings from the original appliance. The differences are described here:

Storage	Description
DR using storage settings of the new target appliance	Storage configuration of the target appliance is retained while recovering system metadata. Schedules from the original appliance are updated to use the default backup storage on the new appliance. Example where DR target appliance storage settings are retained during DR: ●   Original (failed) appliance: two backup storage targets, Internal and NewBackups. Backups for Asset1 go to NewBackups. ●   New DR target appliance: two backup storage targets, Internal and MoreBackups. After DR, the new appliance still contains storage targets Internal and MoreBackups. Since the original NewBackups target does not exist, the schedule for Asset1 is updated so that its backups are written to the default storage, Internal.
DR using storage settings of the original appliance	Storage configuration of the original appliance is recovered. Schedules from the original appliance use the original configuration. Example where original appliance storage settings are retained during DR: ●   Original (failed) appliance: two backup storage targets, Internal and NewBackups. Backups for Asset1 go to NewBackups. ●   New DR target appliance: two backup storage targets, Internal and MoreBackups. After DR, backups for Asset1 continue to be written to the NewBackups target.

These prerequisites must be met before you perform DR from a hot backup copy:

●   The original (failed) appliance must be running Unitrends version 9.1 or higher.

●   The DR target appliance must be set up and configured to meet the general Requirements and considerations for appliance DR.

●   The DR target appliance must be given a unique, temporary hostname (this name is replaced with the hostname of the failed appliance during the DR process). Do not use a hostname that has ever been known to the failed appliance or to the hot backup copy target appliance.

●    Add the DR target appliance to the hot backup copy target appliance that houses the copy you will use for the DR. For details, see To add an appliance.

●   If recovering encrypted backups, you must configure encryption on the DR target appliance. While configuring encryption, you must enter the encryption passphrase of the original (failed) appliance. For details, see Encryption.

Use this procedure to recover the original appliance from a hot backup copy. DR is performed using a command line DR tool that you run from the backup copy target appliance (the appliance that received backup copies from the original appliance). You can quit the recovery process within the DR tool at any time by entering E (exit) at the Selection: prompt.

1.  Using a terminal emulator, such as PuTTY, connect to the backup copy target appliance using the following:

●   Appliance IP address

●   Port 22

●   SSH connection type

2.  Log in as user root.

3.  Issue this command to launch the DR tool:

4.  At the Selection: prompt, enter 1 to recover from a hot backup copy target.

5.  Follow the prompts to perform the DR. See Selection details for a description of each selection.

6.  While copies are being imported to the new appliance, you can exit the DR tool and close the terminal session. To monitor progress of the import, log in to the DR target appliance UI and select Jobs > Active Jobs (or Jobs > Recent Jobs to see completed imports).

7.  (Optional) If you have copied backups of additional assets from the original (failed) appliance to another backup copy target, use these steps to recover those backup copies:

8.  License the appliance as described in Licensing the DR target appliance.

9.  Disaster recovery sets the appliance root operating system password to this default value: unitrends1. Change the appliance root password as described in Change the appliance operating system password.

These prerequisites must be met before you perform DR from a cold backup copy:

●   The DR target appliance must be set up and configured to meet the general Requirements and considerations for appliance DR.

●   If recovering encrypted backups, you must configure encryption on the DR target appliance. While configuring encryption, you must enter the encryption passphrase of the original appliance. For details, see Encryption.

●   The DR target appliance must have access to the cold copy you will use for the DR procedure. Do the following to enable access to the cold copy:

●   Add the cold backup copy target to the DR target appliance as described in Backup copy targets.

●   If the cold copy target is a USB or eSATA device, load the disk(s) containing the cold copy into the device.

Use this procedure to recover the original appliance from a cold backup copy. DR is performed using a command line tool that you run from the DR target appliance (the appliance to which you will recover the original failed appliance). You can quit the recovery process within the DR tool at any time by entering E (exit) at the Selection: prompt.

1.  Using a terminal emulator, such as PuTTY, connect to the DR target appliance using the following:

●   Appliance IP address

●   Port 22

●   SSH connection type

2.  Log in as user root.

3.  Issue this command to launch the DR tool:

4.  At the Selection: prompt, enter 2 to recover from a cold backup copy target.

5.  Follow the prompts to perform the DR. See Selection details for a description of each selection.

6.  After you perform the recovery, license the appliance as described in Licensing the DR target appliance.

7.  Disaster recovery sets the appliance root operating system password to the default value: unitrends1.
Change the appliance root password as described in Change the appliance operating system password.

1.   Log in to the DR target appliance UI.

2.  On the Configure > Appliances page, select the appliance and click Edit.

3.  On the Edit Appliance dialog, click the License tab.

4.  Click Add License Info and enter the following information from the original (failed) appliance:

5.  Click Save to apply the license information.

Because the newly deployed DR target appliance has a different MAC address, you must apply a new license. Do one of the following:

●   If you have the email containing the license key of the original (failed) appliance:

●   If you no longer have the email containing the license key of the original (failed) appliance, contact Unitrends Support (as described in Support for Unitrends appliances) to request a new license.