BackBox H4.00 User Manual

Configuration

50 BackBox H4.00 User Manual

• Spare Pool: (if licensed) emergency pool of paths in case of unavailability of

all paths in the Storage Pool.

• Copy Pool: (if licensed) direct access to a copy of the ‘Storage pool’, allowing

to restore from a copied virtual volume without executing any restore script

fetching back the copy to the regular ‘Storage pool’.

A path is a fully qualified directory that can be specified in two formats, the UNC

format based on a share name (\\SERVER\SHARE\DIR\), or the legacy DOS format

based on a drive letter (D:\DIR\SUBDIR\). The path gives access to a local or a

remote storage disk. Additional paths on different disks can be added in a pool to

increase the free space and optimize parallel operations. If needed, multiple paths

can point to the same disk in the same pool.

ATTENTION: the DOS syntax based on a drive letter prohibits the sharing of virtual

volumes by several VTC’s. To allow several VTC’s access the same virtual volumes

for fail-over and scalability purposes, all paths must be specified in the UNC format.

UNC or not, a path is considered local for a VTC when the underlying disk is

configured as a local disk in the local Windows operating system. The same path is

considered remote by others VTCs sharing the same Data Store. Of course, any path

pointing storage managed by an external File server (not a VTC) or a NAS is

considered remote by all VTCs.

File Access Authorizations

For all file operations in the Data Store, the VTC does a non-interactive MS-Windows

This account can be a local user present in each VTCs, but preferably an account

managed by a Windows Active Directory. The account should be a “non-interactive

account” with the password set to never expire.

Full access authorization must be given to the configured MS-Windows account for all

paths of the Data Store.

Without configured MS-Windows account, the Windows files will be accessed with the

'Local System' account that is used to run the MS-Windows services.

Data Store pool(s) changes

The Data Store pool(s) configuration can be dynamically modified.

When a path is removed from the pool:

• The VTC software will stop accessing this path, any valid files in this path

must be moved to a path still present in the pool

• The last known location of files in this path is still preserved in the BackPak

Domain catalog, to be able to submit restore script to a back-end backup

server. The target of restore script will be a path still configured in the pool.

To manually move all files from an obsolete path to a newly defined path:

• Stop the Guardian tape activity

• Move the files to arbitrarily chosen paths in the disk pool