Barracuda Networks 3175 S. Winchester Blvd. Campbell, CA 95008 United States Phone: +1 408 342 5400 Fax: +1 408 342 1061 Barracuda Backup Service Technical Overview Offsite Backup Overview!... 2 Incremental and Bit-Differential Efficiency... 2 Hardware-based Backup Advantages... 2 Offsite Storage Locations... 3 Security!... 3 Technical Security... 3 Physical Security... 3 Policy-based Security... 4 Backup Verification!... 4 Offsite Backup Reports... 4 E-mail Notifications... 4 Data Retention!... 4 Data Retention Setup... 5 Example Retention Policy... 5 Sort of Weekly Retention Periods... 6 The Problem... 7 The Solution... 7 Terminal Configuration!... 7 Interface... 7 Out of the Box... 7 Automatic network Smart-mode will do the following:... 8 Data Restoration!... 9 Barracuda Networks Customer Control Panel... 9 Windows Restore Tool... 9 FTP... 11 WebDAV... 13 FTPS... 15
Offsite Backup Overview Barracuda Networks offsite data backup service is the latest and best technology the data recovery market has to offer. Using exclusive data replication methods, Barracuda Networks is able to maintain a large amount of data offsite by using only a fraction of the Internet bandwidth available on mainstream broadband connections like Cable, DSL and T1s. This advance in data replication is accomplished by transferring only your new files and the parts of files that change over time. Under this technique even a multiple gigabyte Access database files can be replicated offsite by only transferring a few megabytes of data at a time. What s the best part of Barracuda Networks offsite data backup service? It is completely automatic! Once setup, your backups are conducted on a schedule as your files change without you doing any work! You no longer have to worry about who is out sick or on vacation for your backups to work. Read on to find out exactly how Barracuda Networks technology works to help protect your data. Incremental and Bit-Differential Efficiency Barracuda Networks has developed an innovative method of bit differential analysis, which allows us to very efficiently store your backed-up data and also makes our monthly service plans more affordable than most of our competition. You can see examples of this by searching Google for online backup and comparing Barracuda Networks pricing plans to other companies. Once your Barracuda Backup Server backup system is installed, it collects all of your current data from each of your servers for the first time during an initial backup period. After your initial backup is completed, you can set the Barracuda Backup Server to check for changed and new data as often as you would like. When your Barracuda Backup Server identifies new or changed information, it will analyze each file at the bit level and only has to copy and transfer the new bit sequences in the files themselves. This techniques saves you a lot of Internet bandwidth and keeps your cost down for storing many revisions of the same file over time. There is no difference with Barracuda Networks backup system between a full and incremental backup like you may be used to with traditional tape backup systems. Barracuda Networks backup system looks at all of your data every time a backup runs to make sure you have the latest version of all your files backed up. Hardware-based Backup Advantages Barracuda Networks appliance server, called a Barracuda Backup Server, sits on your network and connects to your servers you want backed up. It pulls your data from the servers, compresses, encrypts and sends it securely offsite to one of our secure storage locations. That storage location then replicates your data onto a second separate storage server. Therefore, your data is actually backed up three times with our system: once on your network and twice offsite. Do not worry, it is not complicated to use a Barracuda Backup Server. In fact, you do not need to plug a monitor, keyboard or mouse into it. To start using your Barracuda Backup Server, simply plug in the power cord and connect it to your network. After you have made those connections just push the power button on the front. Your Barracuda Backup Server will automatically find your network s Internet connection, securely connect to Barracuda Networks data storage network and you can begin backing up your data. Best of all, you do not need to worry about high maintenance costs with your Barracuda Backup Server. Barracuda Networks management service makes sure your Barracuda Backup Server is always running at top notch. Barracuda Networks recommends that our customers use a hardware-based solution to conduct their automatic offsite data backups. Using a Barracuda Backup Server appliance at your location offers several advantages over software-based backup solutions: Dedicated processing power to manage complex backup routines that increase efficiency and save you bandwidth. Backup solution does not hamper your existing server(s) ability to perform. No need to learn how or pay someone else to install, setup, or maintain software. Backups are quick and easy to setup out of the box.
Barracuda Backup Server acts as a local data backup on your network. Data restores can come directly from the Barracuda Backup Server on your network, reducing lengthy download times. Barracuda Backup Server can provide additional file storage capacity on your network. Safe & Secure Offsite Storage Barracuda Networks protects your data by storing it in multiple geographically separated offsite locations after it is securely transferred from your location. Customer information on the Barracuda Networks data storage network is encrypted and secure. It is transferred from your Barracuda Backup Server under the highest level of encryption, stored in encrypted parts and available for access only by authenticated users over a secure connection. Offsite Storage Locations Barracuda Networks protects your data by storing it in multiple offsite locations after it is securely transferred from your location. All of your data is stored in at least two data locations, which are geographically separated by states. Each Barracuda Networks storage location is highly secure and includes alarm systems, controlled biometric access, fire suppressors, redundant bandwidth, and emergency power generators - everything necessary to ensure your valuable data is not in danger. As an example, one of Barracuda Networks storage facilities is maintained in the world-famous Equinix colocation facility in Ashburn, VA. Details about network and physical security of these centers can be found on Equinix s Architecture page. You can rest assured that your data is safe on our storage network, which boasts RAID-5 redundant hardware with hot-spare drives in every data storage server and high-speed data mirroring between our storage locations. Security Data transfers between your network and Barracuda Networks data storage network are always encrypted and totally secure. Only authorized customer representatives equipped with valid account authentication are able to access and restore your stored data. Barracuda Networks approaches the security of your data from three aspects: technical, physical and policy-based. Technical Security The most aggressive combination of symmetrical and asymmetrical encryption in the industry keeps your data stored in a format that nobody but you can access. The United States government recently approved 192-bit AES encryption as the preferred method for protecting top-secret information. Barracuda Networks backup solution starts with the even higher 256-bit AES encryption. Barracuda Networks efforts to protect your data do not stop at a simple encryption algorithm though. We have developed a proprietary advanced digital cataloging system that shreds your data into small pieces and tracks the changes of these parts over time. That system serves to further protect your information by breaking it up and stripping the original meta identifiers from your files. As your data is transmitted to Barracuda Networks secure offsite data storage facilities, your symmetrically encrypted data parts are compressed and sent over your Internet connection with an asymmetrical encrypted key through another encrypted IP tunnel. While traversing the internet, three separate encryption algorithms two layers deep are used to keep your data safe. Physical Security Your data is backed up to at least two offsite secure locations with Barracuda Networks. Each Barracuda Networks storage location is highly secure and includes alarms, controlled access, fire suppressors, redundant bandwidth, and emergency power generators - everything necessary to ensure your valuable data is not in danger. As an example, one of Barracuda Networks storage facilities is maintained in the world-famous Equinix colocation facility in Ashburn, VA. Details about network and physical security of these centers can be found on Equinix s Architecture page.
You can rest assured that your data is safe on our storage network, which boasts high-quality RAID-5 redundant hardware with hot-spare drives in every file server and near instant data mirroring over high-speed fiber connections between our storage locations. No single computer anywhere has all of the information that it needs to access your data. Barracuda Networks has made it as easy as a single click to restore backed up data, however, there is a team of isolated computers on the back-end. Each of these computer systems and databases communicate in unison to deliver you your data. The diversity and isolation of all the systems needed to reconstruct your data strengthens the physical security of your information. Policy-based Security We treat the access of your data like a bank protects cash. All activity related to the management of your backups and requested restoration assistance is conducted by authenticated Barracuda Networks engineers and subject to detailed logging and internal oversight. Only authorized customer representatives will be allowed to request any activity by Barracuda Networks that involves actual reviewing or restoration of customer data. Backup Verification The innovative online customer control panel provides you with instant verification and tools that help you understand the status of your backups and that they are functioning properly. Offsite Backup Reports You have lightning-fast access to extremely detailed reports for every backup run that your Barracuda Backup Server performs. Barracuda Networks backup reports will show you when each backup run started, how long it took, if there was any errors or warnings and detailed information about new and changed files detected. You can bring up a printable version of the report or search for particular files of interest and then link directly to them in the control panel for downloading. If you have separate Barracuda Backup Servers installed at multiple locations, you can view individual reports from any of them using a single control panel login account. This will enable you to manage the backups of your remote office locations from anywhere in the world with ease. You can also have either the full reports automatically e-mailed to you or just have reports with errors e-mailed to you. You will always know exactly what is going on with your backups using Barracuda Networks reports. What s better, you can have that knowledge from home or even the beach, when on vacation. E-mail Notifications You will be alerted by automated e-mail messages when service affecting events impact your Barracuda Backup Server, such as your location losing its electricity or Internet connection for longer than 3 hours. You will also receive automated messages if the situation returns to normal and no action is required. Since these alerts are generated from Barracuda Networks highly redundant and secure offsite storage facilities, you can be sure that you will know quickly when something goes wrong. Data Retention Each one of your backed up files could potentially have several revisions stored on Barracuda Networks servers. These revisions represent different versions of the backed up files over time. Barracuda Networks refers to the act of removing unwanted historic revisions of files as purging. Simply deleting current files on your network does not remove them or their historic revisions from Barracuda Networks backup storage. Those files are still available for restoration until they have been purged based on a retention policy that you setup. When you decide to purge your data, you are removing it from both the local backups and Barracuda Networks storage nodes. This is important to realize since after your data has been purged, it is essentially gone forever. Purging only applies to historic file revisions, so your current data will never be impacted by a retention policy.
Data Retention Setup Purging can accomplished by setting up Retention Policies through the Barracuda Backup Control Panel > Settings > Retention Policies. Basically, you need to tell Barracuda Networks what data to retain and how long to retain it, everything else would be purged. There are three main steps to set up a retention policy. Also remember that you can have many different retention policies on your Barracuda Backup Server(s). Each policy could be retaining a different section of your data. For example, one policy to purge your dump files, one to purge your general documents and another to purge your image and audio files. 1. Name the New Retention Policy - Start by giving your new policy a name that represents what you want to retain and or purge out. This name will make it easier to understand at a glance, down the road, what you are doing with this policy. 2. Choose What to Retain/Purge - Next, you will see all the servers, shares and directories contained in the Barracuda Backup Server you are making this policy for. Include or exclude any combination of servers, shares or directories you want to retain/purge. 3. Choose How Long to Retain - Finally, we need to setup the timeline to retain on. Deciding when to retain can be the most confusing part. The easiest way to start filling out the timeline is to pick a template. To make the retention policy setup easier, you actually define how long you want to keep historic file revisions. There are five different increments you can use to specify how long to keep revisions. Any file revisions outside of the specified increments will be purged. Keep all revisions - keeps all the historic file revisions during the specified time period Keep daily revisions - keeps the latest file revision of each day during the specified time period Keep weekly revisions - keeps the latest file revision of each week during the specified time period Keep monthly revisions - keeps the latest file revision of each month during the specified time period Keep yearly revisions - keeps the latest file revision of each year during the specified time period You can setup a time period to keep your file revisions for each of the above increments. In addition to specifying the time period in days, weeks, months or years, you can select forever or never. Selecting forever as your time period will keep the revisions for that increment indefinitely. Choosing never as a time period eliminates purging for that increment. Example Retention Policy Retention Policies allow you to keep or remove historic versions, called revisions, of your files. You can setup multiple retention policies for different types of files stored in different directories you are backing up data from. The following policy has been applied in this example for a file that creates a single new version once a day. This particular file could be a daily backup dump of a database or mail system. Other files may have many new revisions backed up everyday, which would change the keep all revisions setting of this example. For simplification, that setting is not used in this example. Imagine today is August 10th, 2007 for this example and it is before the current day s new file has been backed up. Since this example file has been backed up once per day between January 1st and August 9th, there would
be 221 revisions of the file before the retention policy was applied. The image below shows which file revisions would be saved using the retention policy settings above. The pink highlighted days show the daily revisions retained, blue shows the weekly revisions retained and orange shows the monthly revisions retained by this policy. We have not elected to keep any revisions after the monthly retention setting of 6 months so any revisions prior to January 1st would have been purged. After the retention policy is applied, you now retain 16 historic revisions of the file instead of the original 221. This type of savings can greatly reduce your overall backup storage usage, especially in the case of large daily backup dump files. All of the retention policy time intervals and retention periods are variable so you can setup a policy that reflects your specific retention needs. If you had selected to keep a yearly revision forever in the example above, there would be a revision retained for every December 31st available preceding the retention period shown. Also, if the file had multiple revisions per day, you could have a period setup to keep all revisions. That would result in multiple revisions retained per day for the time period you specified to retain all revisions. Sort of Weekly Retention Periods Data retention policies can be confusing to understand. To make matters even worse, introducing weekly time periods to retention logic creates an unavoidable perception conflict. The way that retention policy programming deals with this conflict is a somewhat subjective matter. Here is how weekly retention time periods are dealt with and represented within the Barracuda Backup Service retention policies.
The Problem In order to understand how the actual weekly time period works and why it is appropriate to be setup this way, it is first important to grasp the problem that arises from using weekly time periods. Weeks are a mess in a programming sense. While days always fit neatly into months and months always fit neatly into years, weeks can span across both the end of months and years. There is even disagreement across cultures on what specific day represents the start of a new week. We will consider for the purposes of this demonstration a calendar week to always constitute beginning on Sunday at midnight and ending on Saturday night at 11:59:59 PM. Let us also assume that you want to keep only the latest file revision for each week during a part of your retention policy. You then want to keep only the latest file revision of each month for the next time period. When using a calendar week, your actual latest file revision of the month will be purged by your weekly retention policy for any month that does not end nice and neatly on a Saturday. When your monthly retention policy kicks in, it will no longer have the latest revision of the month available to keep since it was purged by the preceding weekly policy. Instead, the latest revision in the month available will be last Saturday in the month. Since weeks often span the calendar year boundary of December 31st, the same problem would occur if a weekly retention setting were applied before a yearly retention setting in the policy. Being able to keep the actual latest revision of months and years is important functionality of a good data retention system. Therefore, Barracuda Networks has introduced the following concept of weekly purging in order not to break the more important monthly and yearly schedules. The Solution Instead of Sunday through Saturday, weeks are considered periods of 7 days in a row beginning on the first of each month. According to the purge schedule the last week of the month may be 3, 2, 1 or actually 7 days long depending on the number of days (31, 30, 29, or 28 respectively) in the month. Therefore, under a weekly retention setting, the retention policy will keep the latest revision of the file for the greatest day in the week. For the first four 7 day periods, it will always keep the file revision from the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th day of the month. For months longer than 28 days, it will end up keeping the last day of the remaining week, which will always be the last day of the month. That way, when the potentially subsequent monthly or yearly retention schedule is applied, it will always have the latest revision of the month or year available for retention. Terminal Configuration Barracuda Networks' Terminal Configuration will allow you to change the network settings on a Barracuda Backup Server directly. To get to this screen you will need to plug a keyboard and monitor into your Barracuda Backup Server. Interface The terminal configuration interface is a curses application that Barracuda Backup Servers boot into when started. This interface will only allow you to change network settings on the Barracuda Backup Server by using direct physical access to the unit. A brief overview of how the Barracuda Backup Server s network configuration works is included below the screenshot. Out of the Box The Barracuda Backup Server will be able to connect to the Internet after it is connected to your network almost every-time right out of the box. This is because Barracuda Backup Servers are pre-configured based on your order information and have several fail-safe methods of establishing connectivity. If the default DHCP or Static IP assignment configured on a Barracuda Backup Server does not work, it will revert to Smart-mode to try to establish a connection to Barracuda Networks' management network.
If a Barracuda Backup Server reverts to Smart-mode in order to establish connectivity, it will follow the logic outlined below. Smart-mode is intended to be a temporary measure of establishing network connectivity and should be ultimately changed to a permanent DHCP or Static IP assignment by either Barracuda Networks' support staff or by using Terminal Configuration. Automatic network Smart-mode will do the following: Arp local area network to identify existing subnet Discover an unused IP address in the identified subnet Detect a local gateway to the Internet on the local network Establish a secure connection to Barracuda Networks' management network Notify Barracuda Networks that the Barracuda Backup Server is online in Smart-mode Making Changes Making network setting changes using the Barracuda Backup Server Terminal Configuration is easy. A Barracuda Backup Server is considered fully online when all three boxes, LAN, Internet, and Barracuda Networks, are green. It is possible to have connectivity to the LAN and Internet but not to Barracuda Networks. This would most likely be caused by a LAN firewall blocking the necessary outbound port 1194. Encrypted traffic is sent out across this port to Barracuda Networks' management network. If you would like to restrict the outbound network traffic on port 1194 to Barracuda Networks' specific IP range, please contact Barracuda Networks' customer support at 866-363-0668, option 1 for a listing of required IP addresses to allow. If a firewall is blocking outbound traffic on this port, the Barracuda Backup Servers Smartmode will not be able to bring the unit online. If a DHCP server is running on the network, it is an easy way to bring the Barracuda Backup Server online. The Barracuda Backup Server will request network IP information from the DHCP server when it boots or after it looses network connectivity for any reason. Static IP information can be specified on the Barracuda Backup Server as well. Use the following keyboard commands to navigate and make changes in Terminal Configuration. The activity log will show you what the Barracuda Backup Server is doing during the process. Changes will not take effect until the Commit Changes button is highlighted and Enter is pressed on the keyboard. Arrow keys changes field highlighting Spacebar selects DHCP or Static Red headings are disabled fields due to the current mode Press Enter on Commit Changes when finished After changes are committed the Barracuda Backup Server will try to connect to Barracuda Networks
Data Restoration With Barracuda Networks, you are in complete control of your data. You have access to your restore your data 24/7 using any of six tools. Only the Barracuda Backup Service gives you this much flexibility. There are two primary ways to retrieve your data: onsite and offsite. Onsite restorations ask your local Barracuda Backup Server for as much data as it has for faster restores. If all of the data you request is not available on the Barracuda Backup Server, it will automatically retrieve that data from the offsite storage locations. Offsite restorations allow you to get data back if you don t have access to the Barracuda Backup Server and will be slightly slower, considering it will be getting the data solely over your Internet connection, not the local network. We currently provide six tools with which to restore your data: Barracuda Networks Customer Control Panel (Offsite method) Windows Restore Tool (Onsite method) Recommended FTP (Onsite method) WebDAV (Onsite method) FTPS (Offsite method) Barracuda Networks Support (Both onsite and offsite methods) Barracuda Networks Customer Control Panel Use the control panel when you just need quick access to a few files. This works well when you are on the road and need a few documents that you forgot at the office. 4. Go to https://backup.barracuda.com in your web browser. We recommend Firefox for Windows or Linux and Safari for Mac OS X. 5. Type your username and password and click Login. Note that your user must have been given permission to download or restore the files you wish to recover. Please see your administrator or contact Barracuda support if you need help. If you have not been given a username and password, contact our support. If you forgot your password, click the Recover lost password link. 6. Next, click on the Locations tab. 7. Find your Barracuda Backup Server, server and share to access by clicking on the blue arrows to expand them. When you find your share, click on the share name to view its contents. 8. Now you can navigate to your data by clicking on the directories to find it. If you want to see your data as it was at a given date in the past, adjust the date and time given in the Share as of: drop-downs before accessing your data. 9. When you find your data to download, click on the name of the file and it will present you will all the versions of that file we have on our system. Click on any one of those revisions to download it to your local computer. Windows Restore Tool Restoring using the Windows tool is great to retrieve multiple files or folders and you are on the same network as the Barracuda Backup Server. This tool that you can install on most Windows computers will connect with your local Barracuda Backup Server to pull back the data you need quickly. 1. Download and install the Restore Tool. 2. To run the Restore Tool, goto Start > All Programs > Barracuda Networks > Restore Tool 3. If this is the first time you have run the tool, it will ask you for your control panel username and password. Then click Submit. 4. It will then load all of your Barracuda Backup Servers into a window. Click on the Barracuda Backup Server you want to search and restore from and click Accept. This should bring you to the normal Restore Tool interface.
5. You can find your documents to restore in two ways: Search or Folder View. You will also want to setup the restore options to goto a location you see fit to restore to. By default, restores will go to your My Documents directory. 6. Search for your files or goto folder view, pick the date to restore from and click Search. 7. When you find the files or folders to restore, make sure they are checked, then click the Restore button below the search list. 8. As files are restored, they will move from the currently restoring section to the restored files section.
FTP Use FTP when you want the fastest restore possible and you are on the same network as the Barracuda Backup Server. 1. Open your favorite FTP program. We recommend FileZilla for Windows or Linux and Transmit for Mac OS X. 2. Obtain the server/host address for your Barracuda Backup Server by going to the Customer Control Panel > Locations tab. The internal IP address for your Barracuda Backup Server should be listed next to it. 3. The username and password are the same as you use for accessing the Customer Control Panel. Note that the user must have administrator rights to access FTP. 4. Be sure to select standard FTP protocol and standard port 21 if given the option. 5. Upon connection, you will be given a listing of directories similar to the following screen shots. 6. Just drag the data to restore from the Barracuda Backup Server connection to somewhere on your system. The Barracuda Backup Server will attempt to retrieve its data locally first. If some of your data is no longer local, it will automatically fetch it from the offsite storage locations. Windows using FileZilla:
Mac OS X using Transmit:
The listing will show years, months, and days indicating on what date your data is available. Past those directories, you will then be shown each server that is accessed by the Barracuda Backup Server. After servers, you will be presented with each share that you backup on that server. Now you can find the data you wish to restore. WebDAV Use WebDAV when you want a fast restore and you are on the same network as the Barracuda Backup Server. If you have any problems with FTP you may want to try WebDAV. 1. Open your favorite WebDAV program. On Windows, follow the instructions below to use the built-in Explorer. For Mac OS X, we recommend Transmit using the settings from the instructions below. 2. Obtain the server/host address for your Barracuda Backup Server by going to the Customer Control Panel > Locations tab. The internal IP address for your Barracuda Backup Server should be listed next to it. 3. On your Windows computer, goto My Network Places. 4. On the sidebar, click Add Network Place to open up the wizard. 5. Choose Another network location and click Next. 6. Enter http://x.x.x.x (replacing X.X.X.X with your Barracuda Backup Server s IP address that you found earlier) and click OK. 7. Enter a username and password and click OK. The username and password are the same as you use for accessing the Customer Control Panel. Note that the user must have administrator rights to access WebDAV. 8. Give this network place a name for future reference and click OK and then click Finish. 9. Upon connection, you will be given a listing of directories similar to the following screen shots. 10. Just drag the data to restore from the Barracuda Backup Server connection to somewhere on your system. The Barracuda Backup Server will attempt to retrieve its data locally first. If some of your data is no longer local, it will automatically fetch it from the offsite storage locations.
Windows using built-in Explorer: Mac OS X using Transmit:
The listing will show years, months, and days indicating on what date your data is available. Past those directories, you will then be shown each server that is accessed by the Barracuda Backup Server. After servers, you will be presented with each share that you backup on that server. Now you can find the data you wish to restore. FTPS 1. Use FTPS (FTP with SSL/TLS) if you are not on your network with the Barracuda Backup Server or your Barracuda Backup Server is not currently accessible. Restoring data from FTPS pulls data directly from our offsite storage locations. 2. Open your favorite FTPS program. We recommend FileZilla for Windows or Linux and Transmit for Mac OS X. 3. Connect to the server/host restore.barracuda Networks.com 4. The username and password are the same as you use for accessing the Customer Control Panel. Note that the user must have administrator rights to access FTPS. 5. Be sure to select FTPS protocol (FTP over SSL/TLS) and standard port 21 if given the option. 6. Upon connection you will be given a listing of directories similar to the following screen shots. 7. Just drag the data to restore from the restore.barracuda Networks.com connection to somewhere on your system. All of the data will be pulled from our offsite storage locations.
Windows using FileZilla:
Mac OS X using Transmit: The listing will show all of your Barracuda Backup Servers as directories. Continue following the directory structure down through the year, month and day of when you want to view your data as. Past those directories, you will then be shown each server that is accessed by the Barracuda Backup Server. After servers, you will be presented with each share that you backup on that server. Now you can find the data you wish to restore.