Managing device backup storage

Indeni
#1

Trying to decide the right thing to do for our backup feature, would like to hear your suggestion…

Backup file size range varies significantly for certain type of devices. For example Check Point MDS and SmartCenter can be 100GB whereas a firewall device can be just a few KB in size. Keeping multiple versions for thousands of devices can take up space. What would be the best way to manage available storage?

One suggestion is to reserve a percentage of available storage on the server for backup. We can make this configurable and set the default to 60%. We can use first in first out to manage the storage removing the oldest backup files first when the disk fills up.

Thoughts?

#2

Ulrica, Here are my thoughts.

The short answer is to set up the backup partition to mantain the last 3-4
images of each device’s config files.

The long answer is that config backup can be a complecated task to address.
Storage requirement is only one of many attributes to be considered.
The size of storage required can be simply set by finding the product of the
number of devices, average file size, frequency of backup and
number of config files needed on-line for history.
Large environments may require SAN, NAS or vStorage.
There are many config management platforms that do config backup and control.
The more safisticated of them will store the delta changes of the config files which reduces
the need for large storage requirements.
If a client is using one of these platforms then Indeni should keep their config management
options on the simpler side, to avoid overlapping and redundent features,
and consider intergration via api with the clients platform of choice.

a good backup solution should offer a local backup partition for conf storage.
Conection to a SAN, NAS and vStorage option sould be offered for off-line config storage.
API integration should be an option when a 3rd party config mnagement platform is available.

1 Like
#3

Thanks Dayton. Appreciate your insight.

#4

@Ulrica_de_Fort-Menar

If we are talking for so large files I think we should introduce to Indeni the option for the user to define a remote server/storage to save the backups through indeni except of the local partition.

For instance the Cisco UCS Manager where you can get also large files for full-backup, you have the option to set the hostname, IPv4 or IPv6 address of the location where the configuration backup file is stored. This can be a server, storage array, local drive, or any read/write media that the fabric interconnect can access through the network.

Below can be found the protocol options can be used by the UCS Manager for saving the files.

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From my experience many customers need to keep many revisions of configuration backups to track changes and for security reasons (in case of audit). I think it is important to offer such an option since in my opinion the indeni role is not to be a large storage with huge full backup files . Besides, this will have negative impact to the minimum specs of indeni installation having large disk requirements.

My two cents :slight_smile:

#5

Thank you Vasilis. This is certainly an option we’re considering. Appreciate your input…