How to Quick Recovery for NAS workload using Power Protect Data Manager

This video demonstrates the Quick Recovery feature of Dell Power Protect Data Manager, focusing on NAS workloads. Quick Recovery allows users to restore assets and continue running business operations from a remote site in case of a disaster. The tutorial guides users through configuring Quick Recovery, syncing metadata, and restoring data from a remote Data Manager server.

Hello and welcome to this Dell Power Protect data manager video. We'll be demonstrating a business continuity feature called quick recovery that is running critical business applications from a remote PPDM. In case of disaster, Power Protect Data Manager supports multiple business continuity solutions to continue business and get the backup infrastructure online with minimal RTO. Quick recovery is one of the most important business continuity features after a disaster.

The quick recovery feature enables users to restore assets and data via a Power Protect Data Manager system at a remote site. Users can continue running business from the remote site until the source PPDM comes back online. When there is a loss of protected assets at the source side, there is a need to recover data in the remote site and bring the apps back online as fast as possible. On the remote site, you can use the quick recovery feature. It restores assets from its destination storage. Data manager has been supporting quick recovery for multiple workload types since the PPDM release 19.17. The support has expanded to the NAS workload type as well.

In this video, we are demonstrating the quick recovery feature with NAS workloads. Log in to the Power Protect Data Manager appliance by providing your admin credentials. You will land on the PPDM dashboard. Before you can begin enabling quick recovery for the NAS workload type in Data Manager, you must comply with the following prerequisites. Make sure that the source and destination data managers are network accessible to each other. Make sure that the data manager version is the same in both source and destination system.

Ensure that the asset sources corresponding to the NAS workload type, such as NAS server or virtual machine, are accessible and enabled on the source and destination Data Manager server. A NAS protection engine should be deployed on the remote Data Manager and it should be able to access the NAS server and the Power Protect DD appliance where the replicated protection copies are present for quick recovery. The assets in the source PPDM must be protected as part of a replication-enabled policy.

The replicated data can be accessed and restored from the remote Data Manager server. Let's go to protection policies and create a protection policy with a replication stage. Here I am creating the policy with protection type NAS, adding a few assets, and enabling both primary and replication stage with appropriate storage devices attached. Proceed with the next pages, verify the details of the policy, and click save. Now let's start with the quick recovery configuration.

For this, we need to sync the metadata between the local PPDM and the remote PPDM. For this, let's navigate to system settings and then disaster recovery. When the disaster recovery wizard opens, select remote systems and click add to add the details of the remote PDM server. Enter a descriptive system name and the fully qualified domain name or IP of the remote Data Manager. Leave the port value on the default setting and enable the sync option. Add credentials for the destination Data Manager, validate the certificate, and save the details.

Now, the configuration of synchronization with the remote PPM is successful. Confirm that the policy created already has a successful protection job and replication job. For this, go to the copy management page and ensure that replication copies do exist for the NAS asset. Next, we also need to make sure that the metadata is synced to the replication target so that the user can restore these protected assets from the destination Data Manager server. Now you see that the sync metadata operation has been completed successfully and you can find all the details on the details tab. Next, let's go to the destination Data Manager system.

In case of a disaster, the destination PDM is ready with all the necessary data and metadata to restore the source Data Manager assets. In the top right corner of the destination Data Manager system, click the remote system icon and select the source Power Protect Data Manager system, which is shown as the remote system in the destination. Now we can see the source Data Manager in the destination. Restore alerts and jobs are the only options available in the remote view. On the restore page, click the NAS tab, then choose one of the assets and verify the details of the remote copies. By selecting restore, the backup copies are available to be restored from the destination Data Manager server. Select the copy and proceed to the next page. Click on restore to an alternate share array.

You will get a list of all shares where the restored data can be written. Select an appropriate share and make sure that you have enough space to restore the data you have in your backup copies. Then proceed to next. In order to restore the backup copies, enter the OS credentials including name, username, and password. Click save and then click next. Keep the default options here and proceed further by clicking on next. In the summary page, cross-check the details once and click on restore. Great, the restore process is initiated. Let's monitor the restore job's progress. Awesome, the restore is now complete.

Go to the restore location and cross-verify the restored data. You can see that the data is restored successfully. So this is how quick recovery provides users quick access to their protected copies on a remote Data Manager server whenever the source Data Manager cannot be reached. Thanks for watching.