Backups and disaster recovery

ThinkAgile CP provides integrated backup and disaster recovery functionality for your VM instances.

On the Backups tab for a VM instance, infrastructure admin users and VDC manager users can manage local backups (manual or automatic), quick DR backups, or external backups.

Figure 1. Options for VM instance backups

• Local backups. Local backups are stored to a storage pool that is accessible from the VM instance. You can choose to automate local backups at specific intervals and automate long local backups are retained. In addition, you can choose to manually back up a VM instance.

  Local backups are used as the source for quick DR backups and external backups, if those functions are enabled.

  For more information about setting up and managing local backups, see the following topic:

  Manage local backups for an application instance

• Quick DR backups. If enabled, a quick DR backup is stored in a second storage pool that is available to the VM instance whenever an automated local backup occurs. You can choose how many quick DR backups to retain.

  For more information about setting up and managing quick DR backups, see the following topic:

  Manage quick DR backups

• External backups. If enabled, a backup is stored in an external repository. You can choose how many external backups are kept and how long those backups are retained. In addition, you can store backups in multiple external repositories.

  Note

  Before you set up an external backup for an application instance, you must register the external repository with ThinkAgile CP.

  For more information about setting up and managing external backups, see the following topic:

  Manage external backups

ThinkAgile CP also includes a function called Clone and Attach, which allows you to clone a vDisk or a backup vDisk from one VM and attach it to the same or a second VM.

For more information about Clone and Attach, see Clone and attach a vDisk.

In addition, ThinkAgile CP supports third-party, agent-based backup tools, such as Veeam. For more information about third-party backujp support, see the following topic:

Third-party backup

• Application-consistent backups
  You can create application-consistent backups if your application instance supports Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) or if your application instance supports application quiescing.
• Manage local backups for an application instance
  In the ThinkAgile CP Cloud Controller, infrastructure admin users and VDC manager users can take a local backup of the current instance, revert to an earlier backup of an instance, or manage existing backups for the instance. Additionally, you can copy a local backup to an external repository if that repository has been registered with the ThinkAgile CP Cloud Controller.
• Manage quick DR backups
  ThinkAgile CP supports quick disaster recovery (DR) backups. Quick DR backups can be saved to different storage pools.
• Manage external backups
  Backups can be saved to external Amazon S3-compliant repositories, if the repository has been registered with the ThinkAgile CP Cloud Controller.
• Third-party backup
  For some customers, the backup and Disaster Recovery (DR) capabilities that are part of the ThinkAgile CP platform might be sufficient. For those who prefer to use third-party backup tools, ThinkAgile CP supports agent-based products, such as Commvault, Veeam, Rapid Recovery, and NetBackup.