Views:

Summary



This "how to" article gives a short step by step guide on a basic vStor configuration for Block and Agentless backups.

Step By Step



Step 1 Setup the Storage environment on the vStor server:
  1. Add some disks to your new Vstor physical or add virtual disks to the VM.
  • Once you have added disks to a vStor server, you can rescan to detect newly attached disks. To rescan using the vStor command line interface, run "vstor disk rescan".
  • Run the command "vstor disk show " to list all disks discovered on the system. 
  1. Log in to the vStor server console as the root user (or alternatively, as the user you created previously using the vstor user create command). The initial root password is DPXvStor
  • vstor user create
  1. Run one of the following commands:
  • vstor system init --skip_pool --multipool if you want to manually create pools after initialization.
  • vstor system init --multipool which enables support for creating multiple pools (skip_pool is the recommended procedure. It gives you the flexibility of creating a storage pool using advanced redundancy options and a specific list of disks.)
  1. Create a Storage Pool with the disks from Step 1, please note the creation of a pool with assign all unused disks from the vstor disk show to the pool with the default creation commands 
    • vstor pool create --name <POOLNAME>
  2. Create a volume inside the pool for the backup destination 
    • vstor volume create --name <VOLUMENAME> --volume_type filesystem
Additional Notes: 
  • The only supported vStor volume_type for backup destination is "filesystem".
  • size_total - Limits the maximum size that can be used for this volume. If this option is not used, the volume can use all the space in the pool. All volumes share pool space.
  • pool_id - Assigns a volume to a pool
Step 2 Creating a share for the vStor volumes

For a volume to be available for DPX use as a destination, a share must be created. Only one share can exist per volume. To create a share, follow the procedure below.
  1. Show the list of defined volumes. ( this will give you the volume id you need to create the Share for DPX.
    •  vstor volume show
  2. Run the share create command.
    • vstor share create --vol_id=<from step 1> --share_type=nfs –-allowed_hosts all
or
  • vstor share create --vol_id=5 --share_type=nfs –-allowed_hosts <comma separated list>
Additional Notes:
  • vol_id – same as the ID displayed using vstor volume show.
  • share_type - nfs is the only supported share type for DPX use.
Step 3 Network requirements:

The following ports need to be open on any firewall for backups to vStor to be successful.
  • 22  TCP Accept SSH Used to configure vStor using command line interface.
  • 111 TCP Accept NFS Used for NFS data transfers to/from vStor.
  • 2049 TCP Accept NFS Used for NFS data transfers to/from vStor.
  • 3260 TCP Accept iSCSI Used for iSCSI data transfer to/from vStor.
  • 8900 TCP Accept Used to communicate with vStor API.
  • 20048 TCP Accept NFS Used for NFS data transfer to/from vStor.
Step 4 Block Backup requirements 

Any client backing up to the vStor appliance must be running DPX 4.5.2 or later. 

Step 5 Agentless Proxy requirements for vStor

Only Linux proxy servers running DPX 4.5.2 are supported for a vStor Target backups.  Windows proxy servers will automatically not be used for agentless backup jobs.