Introduction to Zmanda Backup and Recovery Solutions

This document will help you to create a backup set and configure it.

Amanda Enterprise, a Zmanda product, uses a key policy concept of “Backup Set”. It simplifies and optimizes an enterprise-wide backup system with multiple clients protected equally. A Backup Set is a group of one or more DLE’s (Disk List Entries). A DLE is a combination of clients and their respective partitions like C: Drive or D: Drive in Windows or /var, /root in Linux, applications, file systems, or subdirectories.

The backup set also comprises the backup target (Physical Tape Device, Virtual Tape, or Disk), full or incremental backup, scheduling the backup and staging area for tape storage.

Backup Sets allows an administrator to define a set of Backup Policies like What, How, When to different DLE’s.
For Example:
We have a Linux server mentioned below that we wish to backup, and then below listed two
are considered as two DLE’s.

192.168.0.101 : /home
192.168.0.101 : /var

• Backup Sets are created in Admin -> Backup Sets page in ZMC, as shown below.

To Configure the Media:

In Zmanda Enterprise, backup sets are configured for backing up the data. It can use a broad range of media devices like Disk, Tape Drive, NDMP tape changer, Google Cloud Storage, or Amazon(S3). Zmanda Enterprise uses native archival tools and can back up a large number of workstations and servers running various versions of Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, or Microsoft Windows operating systems. We ensure that our customers can always recover their data while making backup simple, secure, and cost-effective.

You can select and configure the target device for Backup in Admin -> Devices page as shown below.

Disk Device:

In Disk Device Media, ZMC fills the data in /var/lib/amanda/disk/ by default. You can adjust this path to your server’s requirements.
• The amandabackup user must have permission to write to this directory.
• Multiple Backup Sets can use same disk target directory i.e (/var/lib/amanda/disk). The backup sets will be stored in a directory of the same name as the Backup Set.
Below image shows Disk Storage selected as media:

Amazon S3 Device:

Amazon S3 storage device requires Access key and Secret Key of your Amazon S3 Account as described in Setting up an Amazon S3 Account for Use with Amanda access keys allow you to securely control access to AWS services and resources for your users.
Example:
Access key ID example: AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE
Secret access key example: wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY

Tape Changer Device:

In tape Changer Device, a list of tape changers sensed by the operating system and the ZMC are displayed. When you choose one changer, the number of drives in the changer and tape storage slots are also displayed. The devices must be readable and writeable by amandabackup user. Tape Size must also be specified.
The below image show, tape changer selected as media.

Please follow the above steps to create a backup set and configure it to the media.

You can reach us at Zsupport@betsol.com or give us a call at 888-496-2632 (U.S.)/ 408-732-3208 (INTL).

Find the downloadable PDF here. 

Also, be sure to check out  Top 9 Reasons to Convert to Open-Source

Backing up a Linux server can have its ups and downs; figuratively and literally. In the past few years, the expectation has been that you need lots of manpower, free storage, and patience. It can feel complex since Linux is still a predominantly a command-line operating system.

But is that still the case in 2020? Here at Zmanda, we would like to think not.

Why is there so much talk around backing up Linux servers anyway?

Before answering this question, we have to understand server-class machines.

High-Performance Server Class Machines

Server class machines are a breed apart and are something most System Admins are eager to get their hands on. The sheer reliability, speed, and I/O Ops is something that is eagerly sought out. You might even say it’s on the wish list of System Admin’s when looking for a backup solution.

As we all know, a System Admin’s work depends on high availability and high reliability of infrastructure. In addition to the features of server-class machines, their backup strategy also needs to provide the utmost prominence and foolproof solutions.

Server boxes are broadly classified into Windows machines and Unix Servers.

Windows Server includes: Windows Server 2003 (April 2003), Windows Server 2008 (February 2008), Windows Server 2012 (September 2012), Windows Server 2016 (September 2016) Windows Server 2019 (October 2018).

When it comes to the other side, there are almost six hundred Linux distributions, with close to five hundred out of those in active development. There are commercially backed distributions, such as Fedora (Red Hat), openSUSE (SUSE), and Ubuntu (Canonical Ltd.), and entirely community-driven open-source distributions, such as Debian, Slackware, Gentoo, and Arch Linux.

Today, we will be looking at only Unix OS.

Types of Linux Servers

There are 3 types of Linux servers:

• Linux File Server
• Linux Web Server
• Linux Database Server

If you look at any organization or an application framework, it usually is a three-tier application. A front end UI app (like google or yahoo web pages), is hosted on middleware like (Tomcat or a Websphere Application server) and the data generated, is stored in a Database Server (MySQL/ Mongo DB).

Files and images that need constant changes and retrievals are stored on a shared drive, like samba or NFS Storage. These files are usually hosted on another Linux Server as a file-system. This helps in quick retrievals and file consumption for the end-user.

On each of these servers, the amount of data stored and needed for business-critical functionality is vast. Imagine if you’re a part of the IT department of a financial organization and the infrastructure was penetrated due to a vulnerability of a firewall leak and the entire system was scrubbed. The loss could break the organization instantly and be chaotic for the IT department.

Types of Backups That Can Be Done on the Linux Server

The types of backup can be broadly classified into two sections:

• File System backup using Command line tool r-sync
• System backup using backup software like Zmanda

On command-line backup, the most common and easiest is the r-sync command. This is by far most preferred by System Admins.

How to Backup Your Entire Linux System Using Rsync

First, insert your backup medium (USB thumb drive or external hard disk). Then find the drive letter using ‘fdisk -l’ command.

$ sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt

My drive is detected at /dev/sdb1 and is mount point is /mnt

To back up the entire system, all you have to do is open your Terminal and run the following command as the root user:

$ sudo rsync -aAXv / –exclude={“/dev/*”,”/proc/*”,”/sys/*”,”/tmp/*”,”/run/*”,”/mnt/*”,”/media/*”,”/lost+found”} /mnt

This command will backup the entire root ( / ) directory, excluding /dev, /proc, /sys, /tmp, /run, /mnt, /media, /lost+found directories, and save the data in /mnt folder.

You can alternatively explore the tar command options

tar cvzf /media/your_harddisk/backup.tar.gz /

Where the “your_harddisk” is the label or name of your hard disk.

The command will back up entire filesystems in the Linux machine, creating a gzip type of compression.

How to Restore Your Backups

# tar -xvpf /media/your_harddisk/backup.tar.gz

Alternatively, the second method uses backup solutions. This can help in securing backup and restore operations.

These back-up and restore solutions readily help store and restore operations.

Bottlenecks System Admins Can Run Into While Backing Up and Restoring

If we take a look at the solutions, we have both the command line and backup software, which can be used to back up the filesystem.

But is it completely fool-proof? 

Most time, the reality is far too different from the expected behavior.

• The disks used in the backup may be corrupt.
• The filesystem used between the source and the destination may be different.
• The backup may have incurred a Read-Write I/O errors, which could have lost some data.
• The data backed up may not have been at the appropriate time.
• The commands used may not have completed the backup.
• The storage used may get damaged during transit and hence failing the restore process.

Understanding these bottlenecks beforehand can be the difference between a successful backup and restore strategy and a completely failed one.

Also, be sure to check out 10 Points to Include in Your Disaster Recovery Plan

This document will help you to reset your Zmanda admin user password for the Zmanda management console.

Amanda Enterprise (AE) is one of the products of Zmanda. It facilitates the backup of File Systems, Databases, and Applications. It is essential that a Zmanda Management Console user has Admin credentials to use Amanda Enterprise. The definition of Administrator Access; it is a level of access above that of a normal user. Zmanda Management Console is a web application that supports Amanda Enterprise on the latest versions of Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Google Chrome.

Find the downloadable PDF guide here. 

• If you do not remember the password, please click “Can’t access your account?” link in Zmanda Console. You will see the following screen

• Next, enter ZMC user name in the Lost Password section and select the option “Create and Email New Password”

This will generate a temporary password and it will be e-mailed to the mailing address registered to the ZMC user account. Please note that the email service should be configured on the Amanda backup server to receive the lost password email.

• If the EMAIL service is not configured on the Amanda backup server, a password reset can be performed in the CLI by using the below command.

#sh /opt/zmanda/amanda/bin/reset_admin_password.sh

Then the admin password will be reset to “admin”.

Please follow the above steps to reset the admin user password in Zmanda Management Console. In case you are stuck while backing up and restoring the DFS, kindly contact our team, and we will get back to you soon.

You can reach us at zsupport@betsol.com or give us a call at 888-496-2632 (U.S.) or 408-732-3208 (INTL).

Find the downloadable PDF guide here.