Quick Start on Linux
In this article we will cover the following topics:
Where to get the Cyber Backup distribution
Where to find product documentation
How to prepare a system for Cyber Backup deployment
How to activate the trial version
What settings should you pay attention to first?
How to register a storage
How to Create a Backup Plan
Where to get the Cyber Backup distribution
The first step to deploying Cyber Backup is to obtain the product distribution. You can find it on our website website. To do this, go to the “Products” section and select Cyber Backup.
On product page click “Trial version”, fill out the form and get to the page with all the necessary distributions.
Here we need a distribution for Linux x64 – find and download it.
Please note that all distributions of current versions of the product will be available on this page.
Where to find product documentation
Our documentation is located in the “Support” section. In addition to the documentation, there is also a knowledge base – do not forget about it. If the documentation is an exhaustive description of our product, then the knowledge base is additional materials on its functioning, on known situations, a description of various scenarios – in a word, it is a treasure trove of knowledge collected for you by our technical support engineers. Now we are going to documentation section.
Before deploying the product, we should make sure that our platform is compatible with the product. This can be done directly in the documentation. For example, we will deploy the management server on RED OS 7.3, and the first thing we need to do is go to the “Installation” section and select the “Software Requirements” subsection. Here we will find a list of supported operating systems and environments. For management servers We check that RED OS 7.3 is supported.
Next we check requirements for an agent.
The next step is to check the system requirements. In the “Installation” section, select the “System Requirements” subsection, then – recommended configurationIn our example, we will deploy the basic configuration – the lightest, most reliable – Linux OS and SQLite DBMS.
Here we see the following recommendation: 6-core processor, 16 GB of RAM and at least 200 GB of disk space, preferably on an SSD disk. This configuration is suitable for comfortable protection of up to 500 devices (protected objects), using it to protect 1000 or more devices may lead to an increase in the waiting time when generating tasks.
Here are some important details to note: for optimal system performance, we recommend including no more than 250 devices in the general plan (for individual devices), and no more than 500 in the group plan (includes static or dynamic groups of devices).
The documentation says about 6000 agents – this is the upper limit for now. We recommend increasing the number of cores and the amount of RAM and switching to an external base after 2500 devices – we will talk about this another time.
Now we will have a basic setup: several dozen agents. If you are planning a serious combat system, then definitely pay attention to this documentation section and read it in full – there's a lot of interesting stuff here.
How to prepare a system for Cyber Backup deployment
The next important step is Linux packages. You may wonder why they are needed. Our agent for Linux OS performs block backups, takes snapshots of volumes and disks similar to how VSS works in Windows OS. Since Linux OS does not have such technology itself, we implement these functions through our module called SnapAPI. In order for it to be fully assembled, certain conditions must be met, in particular, the necessary packages must be installed.
For RED OS we will need the following packages:
That's all we need. After downloading the packages, we install them with the commands
$ sudo yum install kernel-lt-devel
$ sudo yum install kernel-lt-headers
and also teams
$ make -v
$ gcc -v
Check if Make tool and GCC compiler are installed. If not, use commands
$ sudo yum install gcc
$ sudo yum install make
to install these tools.
Check if the Perl interpreter is installed:
$ perl --version
If there is no interpreter, install it:
$ sudo yum install perl
Checking the kernel version:
$ cat /proc/version
or
$ uname -a
We check the version of the installed packages, and at the same time, that they are installed:
$ sudo yum install kernel-lt-devel kernel-lt-headers gcc make perl
Compare versions. If the package and OS versions match, we are ready to start deploying the system.
If you have any difficulties installing the agent, you can refer to our knowledge base, where there is separate article about assembling SnapAPI. It tells, for example, what to do if errors occur during assembling the module, if the kernel versions and loaded packages do not match, it describes how to assemble the SnapAPI module manually, and provides detailed instructions.
Allow the Cyber Backup installer to run with the command
chmod +x CyberBackup_*
and run the installer:
./CyberBackup_16_64-bit.x86_64
We accept the terms of the license agreement and select the components to install. In our scenario, we only need the management server, agent for Linux and Bootable Media Builder. This component is responsible for creating a separate recovery image in the form of ISO. Among other things, it is needed so that the agent can fully restore itself. If the agent needs to restore not a single file or secondary disk, but completely rewrite itself, then Bootable Media Builder is used to create a RAM Disk, which, after rebooting the operating system, is inserted into the bootloader and receives control. Then, through the disk image, a full system recovery occurs, and after a second reboot, everything returns to its original state. Thus, we can delete the entire machine. And if this component is missing, the recovery option will be limited at the file or secondary disk level.
Next, we select a database management system (DBMS) for the management server – in our scenario, this will be SQLite.
In the next step, we specify the management server port – 9877 – it will be needed for our web console, then the TCP port for data exchange between agents and the management server.
A natural question may arise: how to find out the port numbers? documentation The diagram of the management server operation is shown. It shows which ports need to be opened after installation and how the system components interact with each other.
Our knowledge base contains article on the ports used in the product, with a detailed description of where each component uses what. You can refer to it if you have any questions.
Click “Next” and start the installation process of Cyber Backup. After a short time, the product is ready for use. The installation program offers to open the web console.
The first login to the web console must be done under the root user – in our product, this is the only superuser that the console will allow. If the root user is blocked in your OS, then our knowledge base has a special articlewhich will help solve this problem.
To launch the web console, we need to know the address of the management server. We execute the command
$ ip -a
enter this address in the browser, do not forget to specify port 9877. The web console will launch in the browser, to access which you will need to specify the superuser name and password.
How to activate the trial version
After we get into the Cyber Backup web console, we need to activate the trial version, otherwise nothing will work for us. This can be done directly on the main screen by clicking “Run trial version”, or go to the “Settings” section, subsection “Licenses”, and activate the trial version there.
On the settings page, click “Start trial version”.
We now have a 30-day trial version activated, which will allow you to use all the features of Cyber Backup.
Next, you need to restart the web console. This is necessary because the product was initially launched in a minimal configuration, using standard licenses, and after we activated the trial version, extended licenses became available to us.
Next, we need to license the agent, then we can create backup plans. There are several options for how to do this.
If you have a small number of devices, you can select a license directly in the agent properties. Go to “Machines with agents”, select the agent, in the “Details” section select “License”. In the “Change license” panel, among the proposed options, select the “Extended edition for physical server” license, which will be quite sufficient for this agent to work.
Please note that when licensing Linux systems, a license for a physical server is required.
In the licensing management section, we can change the license. This may be necessary to assign several licenses at once, perform mass operations, etc. – it is much more convenient to do this in this section.
Now we have a full license that will be active for 30 days. We can back up machines, disks, applications, etc. After the trial period ends, the ability to back up will be lost. The web console will still be available, but only for viewing and restoring data.
The last step left to complete is to set a number of system settings.
Basic system settings
In the “Settings” section, select “Accounts”. Here we can add new users who will be granted access to the system. Also in this section, you can create departments of your organization and users who will be able to work in different roles.
Next, go to the “Agents” subsection. All agents registered on this management server will be listed here. Note that the management server itself is not licensed, it is easy enough to install, and there can be as many of these management servers as you like. The main thing is that you have enough licenses for agents, because it is the agents that perform all operations: backup, recovery, replication of backup copies, etc. And the management server only manages the process, so it does not need to be licensed.
The next section is “Settings”, “Security” tab. Here you can specify the lifetime of the web session. For normal work, the default value is enough – 10 minutes. But if you need to constantly monitor processes in real time, then the “End sessions of inactive users after” parameter should be increased to 1 hour or completely disabled.
The Email Server tab: We recommend setting up the necessary settings right away so that you receive notifications. This is a regular SMTP server, so all the settings here are standard.
Now we go to the section “Backup Storage”. Here we need to add the storage where we will save our backups. For example, it can be a network folder. After specifying the necessary data, the agent will connect to it and show the availability of free space.
Finally, we can create a backup plan.
How to Create a Backup Plan
Backup plans can be created via the “Plans” menu item if we want to assign it to multiple agents or a group of devices. You can also create separate mini-plans to perform replication or verification of backups. Such plans are executed separately, outside of backup plans.
There is also the option of creating a plan directly on the protection device. This is very convenient, while we have few devices. In this case, we select the required device on the “Devices” tab of the same name and on the right, on the “Actions” panel, click “Protect”.
If you had problems with SnapAPI assembly earlier, and now it seems that everything works, at this stage you can check whether this is so. In the “Data selection” list, select “Disks/volumes” and look at the list of available disks and volumes. This option is available only when we configure the protection plan on one device. If the disk structure is displayed, then the SnapAPI module worked correctly. If the structure is not displayed, SnapAPI does not work and you need to return to our article mentioned above, rebuild the module and restore its operation.
In our scenario, we will select “Entire machine”, specify the backup storage location configured above, and create a schedule. We recommend using the “Always incremental” scheme – it takes into account the peculiarity of our .tibx archive. Next – “Time schedule”. We will select “Weekly” and schedule backups on weekdays at 23:00 or later. Click “Done”.
In the “Storage period” section, select “By number of backup copies”. This option is more convenient than “By backup copy age” – this way we will always know that we have storage, for example, the last 5 backup copies of this device.
In the Options section, on the Multi-Volume Snapshot tab, make sure that the option “Create volume snapshots simultaneously” is enabled. This is necessary so that during backup, the primary snapshot is simultaneously on all volumes, so that they are synchronized with each other. All this is so that consistent data gets into the backup copy, since during the backup process, data changes on the machine may continue.
On the “Compression Level” tab, check that we have the standard level set. The standard compression level is the most efficient and fastest way to back up. Lower or higher compression increases the backup time, and here we have a balance between speed and efficiency.
So, the backup plan is almost ready. Click “Create”. We can wait for it to run according to the schedule or run it manually right away by clicking “Run now”. The “Action details” panel will show the protection plan execution status.
If we go to the monitoring panel after the backup operation is completed, we will see all the main data on the execution of our plan.
That's all. We learned where to get the Cyber Backup distribution, where the documentation is, how to deploy, activate and configure our product, how to create and execute the first backup plan for your infrastructure.
We recently held a webinar on this topic – it's available in the recording. Please note that there will be a lengthy Q&A session after the demo. We may have answered some of your questions during this session. If not, feel free to ask them in the comments below. We will read and answer them.
