Troubleshooting › Cluster-based Backup and Restore Problems › Back Up MSCS Nodes on Remote Machines

Back Up MSCS Nodes on Remote Machines

Valid on Windows platforms.

Symptom:

How can I reliably back up MSCS Nodes with Arcserve Backup installed on remote machines?

For information about recovering clusters, see the Arcserve Backup Disaster Recovery Option Guide.

Solution:

The Arcserve Backup Windows File System Agent must be installed on each node of the cluster.

The challenge is to back up the shared disk reliably even if cluster shared disks fail over from one node to another. This can be done as follows:

1. Back up each of the nodes with their private disks and system state, using the hostname when submitting the backup jobs.

   Note: Because shared disks can move from one node to another and there is no reliable way of predicting which node will own the shared disks during backup, do not back up shared disks using the machine hostname.

2. Back up the shared disks, using the cluster virtual name when submitting the backup job. If the shared disks fail over from one node to another, the cluster virtual node name fails over with it, so that Arcserve Backup always backs up the cluster shared disks. To ensure this, set up the cluster dependencies so that the cluster name and cluster shared disks fail over at the same time.

   Note: To provide disaster protection for your cluster nodes, you must perform a full backup of each node.