Backup and DR Service for Filestore and file systems

Backup and DR Service lets you capture data from production SMB, NFS, and Filestore file systems, manage it in the most efficient way possible, and use virtual copies of the data for business requirements like backup, test and development, analytics, and AI.

When configuring a backup plan for a file system, you have the following settings to help ensure that you get exactly what you need:

  • Exclude Patterns and Include Patterns: You can exclude or include certain file types. Using either the Exclude Patterns or Include Patterns option, only the most crucial data is backed-up. Only files are excluded or included, this does not impact directories. A pattern can include wildcard characters. On Windows, files named pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys that appear in the root directory of a drive are automatically ignored.

  • Start Paths: Specifies the point in the file share where backup starts. If the Start Path field is left blank, backup starts at the root directory of the file system to be backed-up.

    • Linux example: /usr/local backs up the /usr/local directory.

    • Windows example: \\SERVERNAME\SHARENAME\abc backs up the abc directory on the file share.

  • Prune Paths: A prune path specifies a point in the file system where directory traversals stop. If this field is left blank, the directory traversal descends into every subdirectory of the start paths being backed up.

    • Linux example: /usr/local/lib ensures that nothing within /usr/local/lib is copied, but all other directories and files in /usr/local are copied.

    • Windows example: \\SERVERNAME\SHARENAME\abc ensures that nothing within \\SERVERNAME\SHARENAME\abc is copied, but all other directories and files in \\SERVERNAME\SHARENAME are copied.

  • Service access point IP address: This allows the backup/recovery appliance to connect to the Backup and DR agent using the cluster resource IP and to back up the file system from the active cluster node.

How it works example: Backup and DR volume-based backup with Linux CBT

Only changed blocks are tracked in the bitmap, there are no copy-on-writes or I/O-intensive operations.

The following steps describe the process for how to perform data backup and recovery with volume-based backup images and CBT:

  1. The Backup and DR agent has CBT to track changed blocks in the file system.

  2. The agent calls the OS API to freeze or pause file changes.

  3. Agent creates a LVM snapshot of the file system and synthesizes a bitmap.

  4. Agent API call to unfreeze the file system.

  5. Agent copies changed blocks to backup/recovery appliance, which then deletes the snapshot and catalogs the backup.

  6. The appliance issues an internal snapshot and synthesizes a point-in-time virtual full backup.

  7. For data recovery, Backup and DR instantly mounts a rewritable staging disk and brings the file system online.

What's next

Manage hosts and their connected applications

Other documentation for Backup and DR for file systems

This page is one in a series of pages specific to protecting and recovering filesystems with Backup and DR Service. You can find additional information in the following pages: