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Imation has a long tradition of providing customers with outstanding service and support. And, Imation possesses the competency, experience and customer commitment necessary to support our customers' needs when it comes to their storage infrastructure and backup/recovery environments. Our goal is to facilitate the initial evaluation and design, then proceed with the continuous process of safeguarding our customers precious assets their valuable information.
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Frequently Asked Questions to take advantage
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Imation products. For more information, including brochures, demos, and spec sheets, visit the DataGuard Vault solution page.
Installation
How do we control and monitor DataGuard Vault? Setup of Initial Backup Sets and Schedules
Data Processing and DS-Client
Compression, Encryption and Security
Offsite Storage at DataGuard Vault
Restoring Data
Troubleshooting
At installation the DataGuard Vault administrator console software is installed on as many or as few workstations as required and will require a valid logon, ensuring no unauthorized access. The Customer Administrator Console acts as your interface with DataGuard Vault and enables the configuration of all backups and restores.
DataGuard Vault software is totally agentless, requiring no additional software to be installed on any machines to enable backup.
From the administration console when a new backup set is created you must provide a username and password to connect to a server or workstation. DataGuard Vault fully integrates with NT domains, Trusts and Novell® NDS trees.
No, but a dedicated user is recommended and it should be set for no password expiry for obvious reasons. In a domain, or NDS environment, a user on each machine isn't necessary as one central user can be created with access to all the resources that require backing up.
This user is responsible for backing up and restoring all the data on your network, it is essential that access permissions are of administrative equivalence. DataGuard Vault can only backup data that this user can access. A less privileged user may be restricted, causing data to be missed.
The DataGuard Vault Service team installs the client software at your site and provide the necessary training. If the installation is particularly complex or remote sites are involved, additional days on site support are available at a daily rate.
For large data volumes, the initial backup may be done onto portable media, backing up at LAN speeds to a large array of disks. When the full backup of your data is complete, the media is transported back to DataGuard Vault off site Data Center. Future backups, which are purely incremental, will be transmitted via the leased line connection and synchronised with your initial backup data at the Data Center.
As part of the installation, the DataGuard Vault Service team will work with you to create the backup sets. Additionally, the team will train you to create your own backup sets so you're able to create new and modify sets as needed.
DataGuard Vault will set up users with access to create and maintain backup sets and schedules. Only people with a user ID on the DS- Client side software will be able to administer its functions.
Multiple user accounts can be created for use on the DS Client software and access permissions can be set per backup set. These permissions can be any combination of Backup, Restore, Delete or Modify, so a particular user could be given access to backup and restore only their own machine.
The backups can be configured as often as every hour or as infrequently as once a year. More advanced schedule options include the last working day of the month or even one of backups on a particular date.
A backup set can include a whole server, share/volume, directory or even a single file. The backup set could even include just a registry, should you desire.
There are literally hundreds of different priority levels that can be assigned, ensuring maximum flexibility when organizing your backup schedules.
Yes, the software is designed to fit specific backup windows. DataGuard Vault can be told what time to stop at, for example at 8:00am when employees are starting to arrive, or maybe by 5:00am if there is an important batch process to run.
The DS-Client acts as a gateway only, passing data through after it has been compressed and encrypted, using delta blocking, common file elimination and a digital signature. A database showing information on what has been backed up is held on the DS-Client, but no actual data files are retained.
Yes, by default the DS-Client backs its own database up at 6:00am every morning, although this time can be changed if desired.
The DS-Client only requests data as it can process it and will not pull more data across the network than can be processed.
If the backup is stopped, for whatever reason, it will simply continue with the next scheduled backup. It will not revisit the failed backup set until the next time it is set to run, at which point it will pick up where it left off. If however the problem has been rectified, and backup window allows, the backup can be restarted manually, immediately. Imation has a dedicated team that monitors the progress of backups every day. If a problem occurs, it will be escalated through the appropriate channels.
By default, 5 versions of each backup are held. Unlike a tape backup, where the routine is to rotate tapes in a cycle, DataGuard Vault will only backup a new version of a file when it has changed, guaranteeing that the customer is not wasting space backing up exactly the same version more than once. The number of versions stored can be configured on an individual backup set basis. Each backup set can be configured down to include just one file if desired, giving you the ability to maximize the efficiency of the storage.
DataGuard Vault has full agentless support for a range of network platforms:
- NetWare 3 facilities include the ability to backup the bindery, where NetWare 4 and 5 include support for NDS.
- Windows NT is fully supported. Basic workstations and servers can have the registry backed up, where more advanced environments will take advantage of being able to backup MS SQL and Exchange, without the need to stop the service or install an agent. DataGuard Vault provides full support to backup workstations operating Windows 95/98 & 2000 and its registry.
Yes, for Windows NT on NTFS volumes DataGuard Vault can backup both Permissions and Streams. The Permissions and Extended NetWare Attributes can be backed up for NetWare. This is a configurable option in both NetWare and NT environments.
Microsoft® developed SQL and Exchange with the backup requirement in mind. Both products can respond to API calls requesting the services to dump their data, whilst online, to an external destination. In DataGuard Vault's case the product simply asks the specified MS SQL or Exchange server to stream the data to the DS-Client where it is delta blocked and transmitted offsite. This process is a totally supported Microsoft function and guarantees compatibility with your existing MS systems. This adhesion to Microsoft standards does however prevent us from restoring individual Exchange mailboxes as this is not a function Microsoft has ever supported.
Yes, even though DataGuard Vault is an agentless solution, it is still capable of running commands on remote servers, be it NetWare or NT. For example, shutting down a database or application running on a server to back it up correctly and restart afterwards, or perhaps interact with some overnight batch processing.
Open files are an issue in most backup environments. If a file is open exclusively on a workstation, it is the server's responsibility to stop anyone else, including a backup package, from accessing that file.
To help counteract these issues DataGuard Vault has a range of options which attempt to handle open files. These options, combined with use of the Pre and Post commands, should enable the backup of almost any file. More complex environments such as Oracle or Sybase can usually be configured to dump their data into a normal file which will be delta blocked and backed up as normal.
The small files and delta blocks of data are first compressed and then encrypted with AES encryption using a key which is set by the customer during the installation of the DS-Client. This key is unknown to DataGuard Vault and the data remains encrypted at all times, even when stored offsite. The backup data is only unencrypted by the DS-Client at your site when it has retrieved the encrypted data from DataGuard Vault Data Center for a restore.
Compression can be likened to letting the air out of a balloon. Although the air has gone, the structure still exists and it can be re-inflated easily. The advantage is that it takes less room. Files, especially databases, are often full of empty space, which can be removed to make the file smaller for transit, whilst making it very easy to recreate.
Zip files and other compressed files are already efficiently compressed. DataGuard Vault cannot improve on the compression, but the file will only be transmitted once. If the file should change, then delta blocking will be used to ensure only the changed portions of the file are re-transmitted.
Delta blocking is an advanced logic that divides all files into 4K blocks. When the file is detected to have changed, the Checksum of each 4K block is compared against the last known Checksum for the same block of the same file (stored in the database on the DS Client). Any blocks that are different are pulled out to be re-transmitted. These delta blocks will also be compressed and encrypted before transmission.
Only new and unique data will get backed up during the backup process. Duplicate or unchanged files will not be transmitted. The frequency at which data is backed up (hourly, daily, weekly, etc.) is defined by the administrator.
The data is backed up in real time, so when the administration console indicates that the backup is complete - it is also an indication that the backup data is offsite.
The data is held on disk for rapid access times and is additionally backed up to automated tape libraries.
Authentication is performed between the relevant DS-Client and system unit each time they connect to re-verify the authenticity of the DS-Client. Additionally, the backup data is held encrypted, using the customers' unique keys, so anyone else would be unable to read it.
The data is available for restore immediately after it has been backed up and is held offsite.
Assuming that the machine in question has had a full backup of all files and registry and the data is being restored to a machine of similar hardware, then a full disaster recovery of that machine is very simple.
After installing the operating system, there is no need to apply service packs, configure domain security or install additional software to the new machine, as all this information will be included in the restore.
If the time required to restore the data over the internet is impractical, the DataGuard Vault Service team will move your data from the vault to an appropriate piece of media and send it to your location. There, you will be able to restore at LAN speeds.
Yes, the restore data can be redirected as desired. You are able to browse the network and provide connection credentials for the redirected restore, just as you do for creating the initial backup set.
Yes, you can select easily which files/directories/servers you wish to restore. There is no need to restore non-essential data until a later time if desired.
Use the same user name and password as you used to login to Windows® 9x/NT/2000/XP. If you do not have a Windows logon prompt, then you do not need to login to DS-User.
1. After installation, you may have to start the service manually, using the DS-Client Service Manager: Start \ Program Files \ DS Televaulting \ DS-Client Service Manager. The service may start automatically when you boot/start the machine on which the DS-Client is installed. It will depend upon the settings you chose during installation.
2. On Windows® NT™ installations: By default the DS-Client uses the Microsoft Access database, which is bundled with the service. If, however, you wish to use the Microsoft SQL Server database instead, you need to:
- Purchase the Microsoft (MS) SQL Server database.
- Install the MS SQL Server database
- Install the DS-Client and specify to use the MS SQL Server database as the default database.
- You must also run the dsclient.sql script for SQL 6.5, or dsc-sql7.sql for SQL 7.0, located in the database subdirectory of the DS-Client installation directory before the DS-Client service will start.
Launch the DS-Client service using the dsstatus.exe program: Start \ Program Files \ DS Televaulting \ DS-Client Service Manager.
If you are using a network to connect to the DS-Client, make sure that the dsuser.ini file (located in the DS Televaulting program directory) specifies the subnet or subnet/host IP address of the computer on which the DS-Client is installed. See the comments in the dsuser.ini file for further details.
If you modified the Networking configuration of the computer on which the DS-Client is installed, the Services file of Windows® may have been overwritten. The only solution is to re-run the DS-Client Setup Program: Start \ Program Files \ DS Televaulting \ DS-Client Setup. Setup adds the DS-Client, DS-User, and DS-System port numbers to the Services file, which are needed for proper communication between DS-Televaulting software components.
This problem only occurs if the TZ (time zone) variable has been changed. The DS-Client installation program automatically adjusts the TZ environment variable to the correct settings. To correct the problem, re-run the DS-Client Setup program and just click through the default settings.
If a DS-Client activity experiences an error, the error is flagged as a red number in the Activity Log. The Event Log provides further information on the error.
Out of sync errors will be corrected automatically during the weekly administration process. You can initiate this process manually in Advanced Mode from the System Menu \ System Activities dialog.
1. This problem may occur if the computer is running both a NetWare Client for Windows® NT™ (v. 4.5 or higher) and a RAS server. To isolate the problem, try to logout or shut down the Windows® NT™ computer. If you cannot logout, this indicates a NetWare™ for Windows® NT™ Client problem, and you need to follow the work-around instructions below.
2. Microsoft's Systems Management Server Version 2.0 Release Notes: "Problem with Novell NetWare Clients", suggest the following work-around solution: On the Windows® NT™ computer, replace the Nwgina.dll file with the Msgina.dll file, as follows:
- In the Registry Editor, navigate to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software \ Microsoft \ WindowsNT \ CurrentVersion \ Winlogon registry key.
- Change the data under the GinaDLL value from NWGINA.DLL to MSGINA.DLL.
- Restart the computer.
Connections over the Internet depend, in part on the quality of your hardware, the communications lines, and the service policies of your Internet Service Provider (ISP). Some ISPs terminate user connections after a specified amount of time.
If necessary, you may need to obtain a dedicated connection, rather than a dial-up.
During scheduled backups, the DS-Client will automatically attempt to reconnect to the DS-System data vault up to three times via your connection, in five-minute intervals if the connection is lost.