Solution Overview VIPERVAULT APPASSURE REPLICATION SETUP GUIDE Thank you for choosing the ViperVault AppAssure cloud replication and disaster recovery service. Using this service you can replicate your AppAssure V5 data and snapshots to the ViperVault enterprise storage cloud, effortlessly scaling from Gigabytes, to Terabytes to Petabytes! In addition to providing high performing AppAssure V5 CORE servers, you also have access to the ViperVault Continuity Cloud** that provides fast off site virtualisation and recovery of your replicated servers and networks. ** Access / provisioning of access to the Continuity Cloud is only available on request unless you have chosen to purchase a dedicated Continuity Cloud node. See later in this document for more details. Replication Setup Instructions You do not need a ViperVault portal login or user account to start replicating your agents. All you need is the CORE hostname supplied to you by your reseller which will be something like: aa myhostname1.aa.sc.efscloud.net Each local CORE that will replicate data to the cloud service is called a source CORE or master CORE, and you can replicate as many or as few locally protected machines / agents as you like. The hosted CORE running in the ViperVault AppAssure cloud is called the target CORE or the slave CORE. First, for each source CORE, make sure that the CORE is running a compatible version of AppAssure. Your local CORE should be using AppAssure version 5.3.2 (or newer). You may also need to check your firewall settings, to allow port 443 (SSL web traffic) from your local CORE outbound to the host name of the target CORE. Next, you will need to configure replication on each source CORE. To do this, logon to the source CORE s administrative console, and go to the Replication tab: Once the page has loaded, in the top right click the Actions button and choose Add Remote Core.
The replication setup dialog will appear: Choose I have a subscription to a third party. Fill in the hostname that has been assigned to you e.g., aa myhostname1.aa.sc.efscloud.net Click the Continue button to proceed. It will validate the host, and then present the following dialog to select the local machines you wish to replicate and the target repository. Check the box next to each local agent / protected machine that you wish to replicate to the target CORE, and also enter a contact email address and your company name. Optionally if you wish to ship a local hard disk with the initial set of data, make sure to check the Use a seed drive to perform initial transfer checkbox. You don t have to send a seed drive. If your bandwidth allows, and the data size is not too large, you could simply start replication and let the data upload. If you are going to send an initial seed or preload drive to ViperVault, please follow the latest set of instructions for performing an AppAssure preload in ViperVault s KB: http://esupport.softek.co.uk
If you DO chose to use a seed drive for the initial data, when you click Start Replication the following dialog will appear: Specify the path to the drive where the data should be stored, as well as the agents that you wish to be seeded, and click the Start button. You can monitor the status of the copy (export) operation on the Events tab in the console. Please be sure to follow all of the directions in the above ViperVault KB article when performing a seed operation. When the replication relationship established, on the Replication tab you should now see something like: Note that replication of the base image (or incrementals if you are doing a seed) will begin for each agent after their next recovery point is received into the source CORE.
Note that replication will proceed in parallel for many agents at the same time. The default level of concurrency is normally suitable for most customers and shouldn t need to be changed. However, it can be customised by clicks through Actions, Settings menu: Note that if you increase the max concurrent replication jobs, you may wish to decrease the number of parallel streams. For example, you may wish to use combinations of 2 and 4, or 4 and 2, etc. These are advanced settings and should only be changed if necessary. Having replication proceed in parallel to the cloud allows better utilisation of WAN bandwidth. Once you have completed the above steps, your Reseller will manually approve the replication and it will commence immediately OR if you have specified you are sending a Seed Drive, replication will commence once the Seed has been consumed. Setup complete. You are now replicating to the service! Centralised Monitoring through Integration with the ViperVault Web Portal You can optionally use features that integrate logging and informational data from your source AppAssure CORE into the ViperVault Web Portal. This may be useful to some clients specifically for clients who need to: Centrally monitor the status of all of MULTIPLE LOCAL COREs from one cloud based web portal. Setup global alerting rules that generate emails or PSA tickets on warning or error conditions. To use this functionality, customers will first need a new Customer Account created for you by your Reseller in the ViperVault Web Portal. Once a Customer has login access to the web portal, for each source CORE which is replicating machines to the service, follow these instructions: Use the web portal to create a new machine account for each local CORE, with the AppAssure CORE service plan. On the source CORE server(s), download and install the ViperVault Online Backup Client program. Note that you must be using version 3.7.9 or later of the Online Backup client. This client will (only) securely transfer the logging information into the portal. The settings for each local CORE must match the machine account created, and must be unique. Download the backup client from http://vipervault.net/portal
Start the ViperVault Online Backup Manager Client. Click the My Account button, and configure the web portal account and password: Note that you do not need to create an encryption pass phrase (unless you also plan to use actual file level backup features of the account instead of just the AppAssure CORE integration features). On the Schedule page, configure it to backup 24 times per day: This will cause the CORE information to be updated every hour in the web portal. We do not recommend or support updating the information more frequently than every hour. If you have installed the AppAssure V5 CORE in the default location, no further configuration is required. Otherwise, you need to use the Options page, Backup tab to configure the location of the CORE program:
Once integration has been configured, the AppAssure CORE information in the web portal and refresh every hour. The information for the status of each CORE and each agent on each CORE will appear on the dash panel report, allowing you to easily see the last snapshot date or completed replication date for each agent and the status of all backup, replication services, virtual standby services, and repository state and disk usage. Additionally, detailed information is available in the web portal about each individual CORE. You can view repository status, backup status, replication status, the progress of any snapshots, replication jobs, seeds, consumes, or virtual standby jobs, as well as detailed event log history. To access this detailed CORE information, click the AppAssure icon in the Account Summary tab of the account details pane in the Account Center page: Alternatively, on the Account List page click the AppAssure icon in the last backup column field for the account associated with your target CORE: This will open the detailed CORE dialog. For example:
The Home tab will display an overview of the status of your protected machines, replicated machines, and repositories. The Events tab will display detailed information about the status of any jobs (including backup, replication, or virtual standby), including the progress of active jobs: The Notifications tab shows a history of the status state changes of this CORE server (e.g., when error alerts and error resolution alerts were sent, and which of your notification rules were triggered).
The Continuity Cloud The Continuity Cloud is a resource which provides a dedicated node on request, where you can restore and spin up virtual machines. Your data, system configurations, and critical applications are completely virtualised in the cloud and operate just like they did in the office. Once your Continuity Cloud node has been provisioned normally within 2 hours in the event of a critical disaster recovery request you have full RDP access to decrypt and begin to recover your servers. A full environment containing multiple Hypervisors, virtual firewall and recovery tools are made available. The Continuity Cloud is available free you only pay for it when you need to use it. Alternatively if you wish to have full AppAssure or ShadowProtect replicated machines on standby in the ViperVault Service, then you can purchase a dedicated continuity cloud node. KB s and Other Information Technical KB s, Service Guides, Support and Readmes are available on UK Distributor Softek s website here: http://esupport.softek.co.uk The ViperVault website is available here: http://vipervault.net ViperVault Portal Access is here: http://vipervault.net/portal Additional Sales / FAQ information is also available from UK Distributor Softek: http://softek.co.uk/vipervault