StorSimple Data Protection Console Quick Start Guide

StorSimple Data Protection Console

Quick Start Guide

5000 and 7000 Series Appliance

Software Version 2.0.1 (2.1.1-267)

Exported from Online Help on September 19, 2012

761-0008-0300 Rev A Content exported from Online Help,

9/19/2012, pg. 2

© 2012 StorSimple, Inc.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents .................................................................................................................. 2

Welcome ............................................................................................................................... 3

Supported Backup Operations ............................................................................................... 3

SSDPC Software Installation .................................................................................................. 3

Pre-Requisites ........................................................................................................................................... 4

Installation ................................................................................................................................................ 4

New installation ........................................................................................................................................ 4

Upgrade..................................................................................................................................................... 6

Using SSDPC .......................................................................................................................... 8

Common Operations in SSDPC .................................................................................................................. 8

Creating Backup Copies .......................................................................................................................... 11

Contacting Technical Support .............................................................................................. 12


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Welcome

Part no. - 761-0008-0300-A

Thank you for purchasing a 5XXX or 7XXX series StorSimple Appliance. This guide provides information on the

StorSimple Data Protection Snap-in for the Microsoft Management Console (MMC). It walks you through the

steps necessary to initially install and configure the software. The guide also provides information on how to

contact technical support.

The StorSimple Data Protection MMC Snap-In software installs on Windows Server 2008 (including R2) and

allows the administrators to manage Snapshots, Cloud Snapshots and Cloud Clones, for the purpose of creating

consistent point-in-time backup copies of volume data. This software is fully supported by applications such as

Exchange and SharePoint, and minimizes administrative burden.

Supported Backup Operations

StorSimple Data Protection provides three types of backup operations as described below.

Snapshots – a point-in-time copy of your volume data that is stored on the appliance. It can be used

like a local backup copy and generally provides a fast backup and restore experience.

Cloud Snapshots – is a snapshot that is stored in the cloud as a volume checkpoint. Cloud Snapshots

are analogous to having a snapshot replicated to a different, off-site storage system.

Cloud Clones – is a snapshot that is stored in the cloud as a truly independent, off-site backup copy.

Cloud Clones are analogous to having your backup copies stored in an off-site tape vault.

StorSimple Data Protection can be used to create Snapshots, Cloud Snapshots and Cloud Clones of the

StorSimple volumes formatted using the NTFS file system, application components of SharePoint databases,

Microsoft exchange storage groups among others and of volume groups.

SSDPC Software Installation

This page describes the installation procedure for the DPC software including the pre-requisites in the following

sections:

Pre-Requisites

Installation


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Pre-Requisites

Before you can begin using StorSimple Data Protection, you must complete the following tasks:

Create volumes on your StorSimple appliance, assign to appropriate application servers, and ensure that

application servers can mount and use these volumes. Note that the following types of StorSimple

volumes are now supported for backups:

Simple Volumes

Dynamic Volumes

Dynamic Volumes with Mirroring (RAID - 1)

Cluster Shared Volumes

Install StorSimple Data Protection MMC Snap-in on each of your application servers running Windows

Server 2008 (including R2) as documented below.

For information on how to configure your StorSimple appliance, please refer to the Appliance Quick Start Guide

(QSG) and Web UI documentation. For detailed information on how to use the MMC Snap-in, please refer to the

MMC Snap-in User Guide.

Installation

The process can be slightly different depending upon whether the software is being installed on the system for

the first time or an existing version is being upgraded. The two processes are detailed in the following sections:

New Installation

Upgrade

New installation

Download the installation kit (approximately 11MB for the 32-bit version or 13MB for the 64-bit version)

from StorSimple’s FTP server. This requires creation of a customer account with StorSimple support.

When you have the binaries for StorSimple Data Protection downloaded, double-click the setup.exe file

as shown below to begin installation.

Use SSDPSetup_X64.exe for 64-bit version or SSDPSetup_X86.exe for the 32-bit version.


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Installing StorSimple Data Protection will prompt you to install the “Visual C++ Runtime Libraries”.

Click on ‘Install’ to begin the installation of Visual C++ Runtime libraries. If you do not install these

libraries, StorSimple Data Protection will not be able to install or function properly. Once the “Visual

C++ Runtime Libraries” are installed, or if they are already installed, the StorSimple Data Protection

Setup Wizard will open as shown below.

Click ‘Next’ to begin, and on the next screen, read the license agreement, terms and conditions, and

accept them by clicking the radio button next to ‘I Agree’. To proceed, click ‘Next’.


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On the next screen, specify where you would like to have the software installed. Otherwise, leave the

default settings intact. Click ‘Next’ to continue.

Click on ‘Next’ again to confirm the installation of StorSimple Data Protection on your computer.

The installation will take a few minutes and a status bar will reflect the progress of the process. Close the

window once the installation of StorSimple Data Protection application is complete.

Upgrade

Follow this process when your system has a version of DPC running and you intend to upgrade it.

When you click the setup.exe file and your system has a prior DPC version installed, you will see the

following message:


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From the Start menu, access Control Panel > Programs > Programs and Features. Choose the

StorSimple Data Protection program from this list to uninstall it.

If there are any processes running in the background, you may see the following message -

Choose 'Automatically close applications and attempt to restart them after setup is complete. Select OK.

Wait until the older version of StorSimple Data Protection is uninstalled.


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Double-click the appropriate '.exe' (SSDPSetup_64.exe for 64-bit and SSDPSetup_86.exe for 32-bit) to

begin installation. You will now see the following screen.

Follow the rest of the steps as outlined in the 'New Installation' section of this page to complete the upgrade.

Using SSDPC

This page describes the various operations that can be performed in the SSDPC software starting from how to

launch this software in the following sections:

Common Operations in SSDPC

Creating Backup Copies in SSDPC

Common Operations in SSDPC

To launch StorSimple Data Protection, click the following sequence:

Start → All Programs → StorSimple Data Protection → Data Protection Console (DPC).

The console will appear as shown below.


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The user can now create volume groups that are groups of volumes associated with one other to form the basis

of a backup or restore job (Snapshot, Cloud Snapshot or Cloud Clone). For instance, you would create a volume

group consisting of Exchange database and transaction log volumes to ensure a consistent point-in-time backup

copy of all of your Exchange data.

Note: The user can also create empty volume groups and assign volumes later.

The user can see all the configured volume groups by clicking ‘Volume Groups’. Create a volume group by right-

click ‘Volume Groups’ and selecting ‘Create Volume Group’.

A Volume Group window is displayed that allows you to specify the name of the volume group, the application

associated with the volume group, and the volumes to include in the volume group, as shown below. Volume

groups can only contain StorSimple volumes.


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Specify a name, choose the appropriate application, select the volumes to include and then click ‘Accept’. Once

saved, the Volume Group will be listed in the Volume Groups list.

After the user has created a volume group, the appliance that is configured to communicate with the DPC UI will

show up in the results pane when the ‘Appliance’ node is selected.

Note that the ‘Appliance’ shows up as type ‘Referenced’. The user can configure the ‘Rescan’ schedule for the

appliance to synchronize on a regular basis. Select the ‘Appliance’ node and from the context menu, click on

‘Rescan Appliances’.

In the pop-up dialog, the user can specify the frequency, start data and time, next run and advanced settings

such as repetition, expiration and duration. The rescan process will sync the appliance and also perform a full

backup registry Restore. Backup registry refers to the list of all the Cloud Snaps and Cloud Clones stored in the

configured cloud storage for all service providers. Enabling the rescan schedule will change the appliance type to

'Configured'.

The volume groups (only those with associated backups) that were created on the Web UI will also be imported

when rescan is initiated. The imported volume groups can be easily distinguished from the ones created on the

SSDPC itself from the suffix added to each volume group as shown below. By default, the imported groups are

not shown.


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To show the volume groups that were imported from the Web UI, use the 'Toggle imports display' option in the

context menu for the localhost node.

Once the appliance is synced, the StorSimple volumes will now be shown when you click the ‘Volumes’ item in

the left pane.

The workspace will show the Volume Name (drive letter), Appliance Volume Name (as specified in the Appliance

Web UI), Access Paths, Appliance (IP address of the StorSimple appliance the volume is provided by) and Volume

Serial Number (created at the time the volume was formatted).

Creating Backup Copies

After the volume groups have been created, you can use StorSimple Data Protection to create backup copies

(Snapshots, Cloud Snapshots or Cloud Clones) in one of two ways:

On Demand — creates an immediate backup copy that does not repeat. Right-click on your volume

group to invoke the context menu. Select ‘Take backup’ option as shown below. Alternatively, you can

use the link in the ‘Actions’ pane.


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Selecting this action allows you to start a backup interactively. A pop-up dialog will allow you to choose

between starting a Snapshot, Cloud Snapshot or a Cloud Clone. Backup jobs that are started

interactively will appear in Jobs > Running for the duration of the operation.

Automated Schedule — creates a backup copy according to a schedule that you specify including

frequency and retention. To create a scheduled backup policy, right-click ‘Policies’ and select ‘Create

Policy’, or use the ‘Create Policy’ action shown in the actions pane after you have left-clicked ‘Policies’ in

the left pane.

A pop-up box will appear that has two tabs, ‘General’ and ‘Schedule’. Under the ‘General’ tab, specify

policy name, volume group, type of operation, and the retention period for backups associated with this

policy. In the ‘Schedule tab’, specify frequency of operation, and advanced settings including how often

to repeat the schedule, when the schedule should expire, and whether or not the schedule is active

(enabled). Save your policy. Backups initiated will appear in Jobs > Running for the duration of the

operation. Completed backups will appear in the list of Snapshots, Cloud Snapshots or Cloud Clones

under ‘Backup Copies’.

Contacting Technical Support

Please contact StorSimple technical support to create your support account, which will allow you

access to product documentation and other resources including software images, technical reports,

release notes, and other collateral using StorSimple’s File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server at:

ftp://ftp.storsimple.com

Should you encounter any issues with your StorSimple appliance, please do not hesitate to contact

StorSimple Technical Support at:

Telephone: 1-855-2STORSIMPLE (1-855-278-6774)

Web: http://support.storsimple.com/home

Email: [email protected]

ftp://ftp.storsimple.com/

http://support.storsimple.com/home

mailto:[email protected]

StorSimple Data Protection Console Quick Start Guide

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