Understanding Arcserve UDP Agent (Windows) › Features

Features

The following features are provided with Arcserve UDP Agent (Windows):

BACKUP

The following backup features are provided with Arcserve UDP Agent (Windows):

• Lets you perform different types of backup jobs, such as full, incremental, or verify.
• Provides volume filtering capability to let you specify to back up only the selected volumes.
  • If the specified backup destination is on the local volume, a warning message displays notifying you this volume is not being backed up.
  • If system/boot volume is not selected for backup, a warning message displays notifying you the backup is unusable for Bare Metal Recovery (BMR).
  • If a data store is configured on the volume, then the volume cannot be selected as the backup source.
• Protects all specified volumes of your computer (except if the volume contains the backup destination).
• Lets you encrypt and protect (with encryption passwords) your sensitive data.
• Lets you set/change backup schedules (or immediately initiate a customized backup).
  • Lets you set advanced scheduling features. To use advanced scheduling, set your Backup Data Format to Advanced. Then, you can access the advanced schedule view, set the advanced schedule for the backup job, backup throttle, merge and daily/weekly/monthly retention.
• Provides a system tray monitor to display status/notification information and perform quick actions.
• The Arcserve UDP solution provides the capability to utilize a complimentary, limited version of Arcserve Backup to perform backups (agent-based and agentless-based) to tape.

Block Level Incremental Backups

• Only backs up the blocks on the source volumes that have changed after the last successful backup.
• Significantly reduces the amount of backup data.

  If you have a large file and you only change a small portion of this file, Arcserve UDP Agent (Windows) backs up only the changed portion to the incremental backup. It does not back up the whole file.

• Consumes less disk space and less time.
• Lets you perform more frequent backups, making the backup images more up-to-date (as often as every 15 minutes) for recovery.

Infinite Incremental (I²) Snapshots

• Initially creates one full backup and then intelligently creates incremental snapshot backups forever (after the initial full backup).
• Uses less storage space, performs backups faster, and puts less load on your production servers.
• Can automatically collapse (merge) incremental changes optimizing the use of disk storage.

Application Consistent Backups

• Takes advantage of Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to ensure data consistency for any VSS-aware application.
• Provides recovery of both Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange Server (without performing a full disaster recovery).

Ad-hoc Backups

An ad-hoc backup is one that is created when the situation makes it necessary, rather than being arranged in advance or being part of a plan.

• Provides you with the flexibility to perform "ad-hoc" backups outside of the scheduled backups.

  For example, you have a repeat schedule for Full, Incremental, and Verify backups and you want to make major changes to your computer. You can perform an immediate backup without waiting for the next scheduled backup to occur.

• Provides you with the capability to add a customized (unscheduled) recovery point so that you can roll back to this previous point in time if necessary.

  For example, you install a patch or service pack and then discover it adversely affects the performance of your computer. You can roll back to the ad-hoc backup session that does not include it.

Change Backup Destination

Provides you with the capability to change the backup destination, depending on the type of installation.

• Arcserve Unified Data Protection - Full:

  Provides you with the capability to change the backup destination, when the destination is a data store on a Recovery Point Server (RPS). The next backup will be a full backup.

• Arcserve Unified Data Protection - Agent:

  Provides you with the capability to change the backup destination, when the destination is a local disk or a remote shared folder. When the disk space on your destination volume reaches its maximum capacity, Arcserve UDP Agent (Windows) lets you change the destination and you can continue with full or incremental backups.

  Note: You can also configure email alert notifications for Destination Threshold so that you can be informed if it reaches the specified threshold value.

Copy Recovery Points

• Provides you with the capability to copy recovery point data and safely store it off-site for the purpose of restore in a catastrophe, or you can save your recovery points to multiple locations. In addition, if your destination is getting full you can consolidate your backups into a single recovery point which resembles the exact state at that point. When you select a recovery point to copy, you are capturing:
  • Backup blocks that were created for that specified point-in-time.
  • Whatever previous backup blocks are necessary to recreate a full and most recent backup image.
• The Copy Recovery Points feature can be launched manually (ad-hoc) or automatically based upon your specified schedule.

Mount Recovery Points

Provides the ability to mount a recovery point to a drive letter (volume) or an NTFS folder, to view, browse, copy, or open the backup files directly in Windows Explorer.

Backup Speed Throttling

Provides you with the capability to specify the maximum speed (MB/min) at which your backups are written. You can throttle the backup speed to reduce CPU or network use. However, limiting the backup speed, has an adverse effect on the backup window. As you lower the maximum backup speed, it increases the amount of time of perform the backup.

Note: By default, the Throttle Backup option is not enabled and backup speed is not being controlled. Backup Speed Throttling only applies when the Backup Data Format is Standard. When the Backup Data Format is Advanced, a Backup Throttle Schedule is available.

Reserve Space on Destination

Provides you with the capability to specify a percentage of the calculated space that is necessary to perform a backup. This amount of continuous space is then reserved on the destination before the backup starts writing data and helps improve backup speed.

Note: Reserve Space on Destination only applies when the Backup Data Format is Standard. When the Backup Data Format is Advanced, this option does not exist.

Backup Status Monitoring

Arcserve UDP Agent (Windows) provides the capability to monitor:

• Last backup status
• Recovery Points
• Destination capacity
• Protection summary
• Most recent events
• License notifications

Job Status Monitoring

Arcserve UDP Agent (Windows) provides the capability to monitor:

• Details about the next scheduled job
• Details about the currently running job

RESTORE

Arcserve UDP Agent (Windows) provides the following restore features:

• Restore data from specific recovery points.
• Search/browse to a specific file/folder to restore.
• Restore from File Copy.
• Restore a virtual machine (VM) that you previously backed up.
• Set the restore destination to an alternate location or server.
• Restore encrypted backup data.
• Granular-level restore of Exchange objects.
• On Demand Catalog job for any catalog-less backup recovery point using the Find Files/Folders to Restore option.
• Restore Active Directory to recover Active Directory objects and attributes.

Types of Restores

Arcserve UDP Agent (Windows) provides the following types of restores:

• File-Level Restore

  Restores any backed up files/folders.

• Recovery Point Restore

  Restores backed up data based from a specified point in time (recovery point).

• File Copy Restore

  Restores File Copy data from a disk or cloud.

• Exchange Granular-Level Restore

  Restores individual Exchange objects (mailboxes, mailbox folders, or mail).

• Virtual Machine (VM) Recovery

  Restores a VM that you previously backed up.

• Application Restore

  Restores backed up Microsoft SQL Server/Microsoft Exchange data at the database level.

• Explorer Integration Restore

  Arcserve UDP Agent (Windows) provides the capability to browse directly and restore files/folder and Exchange objects (mailboxes, mail folders, mail) from Windows Explorer by using the "Change to Arcserve UDP Agent (Windows) View" option.

• Change Restore Location

  Arcserve Unified Data Protection - Full:

  • Provides you with the ability to restore from a local disk, remote shared folder, and from a Recovery Point Server (RPS).

  Arcserve Unified Data Protection - Agent:

  • Provides you with the ability to restore from a local disk or a remote shared folder.
• Bare Metal Recovery (BMR)
  • Recovers a computer system from "bare metal", and includes the operating system, applications, and data components necessary to rebuild or restore the entire backed-up system. BMR is used for disaster recovery or for migration from one server to another.
  • Restores to dissimilar hardware and resolves any hardware differences.
  • Expands and restores to bigger disks if necessary.
  • Provides the capability to perform the following types of V2P (Virtual to Physical) Bare Metal Recovery. This feature lets you perform V2P recovery from the latest state of a standby virtual machine and from any recovery point that has been previously converted from a Arcserve UDP Agent (Windows) backup session. This feature also helps you reduce the loss of your production computer.
    • BMR from a Hyper-V server
    • BMR from a VMware ESX or vCenter

  Disk Resizing

  • During a Bare Metal Recovery, you can restore the image to another disk and can resize the disk partitions if necessary (without losing any data that is stored on the drive).
  • When restoring to another disk, the capacity of new disk must be the same size or larger than the original disk.

    Note: Disk resizing if necessary is for basic disks only, and not for dynamic disks.

ALERT NOTIFICATIONS

Arcserve UDP Agent (Windows) provides the following email alert notifications:

• Missed jobs - Sends an alert notification for any scheduled job that did not run at the scheduled time.
• Backup, Catalog, File Copy, Restore, or Copy Recovery Point job failure/crash - Sends an alert notification for all unsuccessful job attempts. This category includes all failed, incomplete, and canceled jobs, and crashed attempts.

  Note: These email alerts are sent with a high importance. The email alerts that have a high importance level setting display a visual indicator of an exclamation point in their Inbox.

• Backup, Catalog, File Copy, Restore, or Copy Recovery Point job success - Sends an alert notification for all successful job attempts.
• Merge job stopped, skipped, failed, or crashed - Sends an alert notification for all stopped, skipped, failed, or crashed merge jobs.
• Merge job success - Sends an alert notification for all successful merge jobs.
• Backup destination free space is less than - Sends an email notification when the amount of unused space at the backup destination is less than a specified value.
• New Updates Available - Sends an email notification when a new update for Arcserve UDP Agent (Windows) is available. Email notifications are also sent if a failure occurs during the check for updates or during the download.
• Resource threshold alerts - Sends an alert notification when any specified resource performance threshold is reached. The monitored resource levels are CPU Usage (percentage), Memory Usage (percentage), Disk Throughput (MB/second) and Network I/O (percentage of NIC bandwidth currently using).

ENCRYPTION/DECRYPTION SUPPORT

Arcserve UDP Agent (Windows) provides the capability to encrypt and protect (with encryption passwords) your sensitive data and also decrypt the encrypted data after recovery.

• Encryption support is provided for both uncompressed backup format and compressed backup format. (Uncompressed backup is no longer VHD format if encrypted).
• Windows built-in encryption libraries are used for data encryption and decryption.

  For Windows 2003/Vista/2008: CAPI (CryptoAPI) is used for data encryption.

  For Windows 7/2008 R2/Windows 2012: CNG (Cryptography API Next Generation) is used for data encryption.

  Note: Data interoperability is supported both ways between CAPI and CNG, meaning that data that is encrypted on Windows 2003/Vista/2008 can be decrypted on Windows 7/2008 R2 (and vice versa). This data interoperability enables moving backups of any computer to a different computer, and to restore data from there.

• Encryption password management provides a memory feature so that you do not need to remember encryption passwords when attempting to restore encrypted data. For every encrypted backup, the encryption password is saved in a password list file.

  As long as you can log in to Arcserve UDP Agent (Windows), there is no need to remember encryption passwords to restore data from current backups. (Current backups are defined as backups that were created from the same computer that you are logged in to). If you attempt to restore data from encrypted backups belonging to a different computer, you are always asked to provide the encryption password.

FILE COPY

File Copy can be used for copying critical data to secondary locations and can also be used as an archiving solution. File Copy allows you to safely and securely delete the source data after it has been copied to an off-site or secondary storage repository.

Arcserve UDP Agent (Windows) provides the following capabilities to copy or move files and help you reduce storage cost, meet compliance, and improve data protection.

Note: When you use the option File Copy - Delete Source, the data is moved from the source to the destination (deleted from source location). When you perform a file copy, the data is copied from the source to the destination (files remain intact on the original location).

• Copy files to disk or to cloud based upon your specified policies.
• Block-level file copying lets you save and store only the blocks of the source that have changed as of the last file copying. (Significantly reduces the amount of file copied data).
• Select the source to copy, which can be a specific volume, volumes, folder, or folders.
• Use filters to include or exclude files that are based upon your specific criteria or patterns.
• Specify a schedule for file copying that is based upon completion of a specified number of successful backups.
• File copy versions of the same source at the specified destination.
• Encrypt file copied data for security.
• Compress data before performing file copying process.
• Specify how long to retain file copy data.
• Specify how many versions of the data you can have on the destination.

  Note: Arcserve UDP Agent (Windows) does not copy application files, files with system attributes, and files with temporary attributes. Only a current backed-up source is eligible for file copying.

Arcserve UDP Agent (Windows) UPDATES

Provides the following capabilities for downloading and installing self- updates to Arcserve UDP Agent (Windows):

• Check for new available updates to Arcserve UDP Agent (Windows) (manually initiated from the UI or system tray monitor or automatically as scheduled).
• Trigger automatic or manual downloading of updates.
• Specify a custom schedule to perform automatically periodic checks for updates.
• Trigger installation of updates either from the UI, the system tray monitor, or silently from the command line.
• Specify to send automatic email notifications when new updates become available (or when problems occur).
• Configure the client and or a staging server to connect to Arcserve Support (directly or by way of a proxy server) to download available updates. (A staging server is a Arcserve UDP Agent (Windows) installed computer which is used as a temporary storage location for downloading an update before it is installed into a Arcserve UDP client computer from that staging server).
• Use staging servers for clients that have limited access to the Internet.
• Configure multiple staging servers for downloading the updates. If the primary staging server is unavailable, the download function automatically transfers to the next specified staging server.
• Remote deploy from one computer to another and let you move all updates configuration and email settings from that first computer to the deployed computer.

Note: All updates that are released for Arcserve UDP Agent (Windows) are cumulative. As a result, each update also includes all previously released updates to ensure that your computer is always up-to-date.