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Today’s Quick Tip addresses Bare Metal Restore (BMR) for Citrix XenServer. This is a popular virtualized environment used by many of our customers. While the benefits of BMR to a hosting provider are clear, the process for performing a BMR of a paravirtualized machine may not be as obvious.

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Today’s Quick Tip covers the process of setting up remote multi-point replication with CDP 3.0. This feature is useful if you need to set up offsite backups, and we have received feedback from customers who wanted clarification on the actual setup process involved.

This topic provides instructions on how to set up remote multi-point replication based upon the following scheme:

Here are the steps to set it up:

1) Create an initial replica of the backup server locally

2) Install a remote CDP Server

3) Move the Disk Safe to the remote CDP Server

4) Add the Agent to the remote CDP Server.

*Please note that you will need to update the key for the Server’s Agent during this process so that the CDP Server is authorized to backup this Agent.

5) Create working environment on the remote CDP Server

6) Re-attach the Disk Safe on the remote CDP Server

7) Configure the replication schedule on the remote CDP Server to protect the local machine

For more details, including screenshots, visit our wiki.

Today’s Quick Tip covers the simple steps end users can take to restore their files to their home directory using their own control panel credentials.

This functionality, available starting with CDP 3.18, allows you to offer your customers self-service restore as a value added service, or you can separate this service on a server basis for premium customers.

End users of our supported control panels (see list here) can restore their own files to their home directory if their control panel is not within a Virtuozzo container. Control Panel users cannot restore files owned by others or root.

Your end users can restore files to their home directory using the following process within CDP 3.0:

1) Choose the browse option for the recovery point from which they would like to recover

2) Select the files or folders they would like to restore

3) Select the Restore Selected option

It’s as easy as one-two-three! At this point, they can sit back and watch the restore happen.

For more details, including screenshots, visit our wiki.

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Today’s Quick Tip focuses on performing Bare Metal Restores with LVM. The value of BMR for disaster recovery is well known, but Linux LVM adds additional complexity to the solution so a more automated solution is key for many of our customers.

Many of our customers that run Linux see value in an automated process for backing up and restoring their LVM configurations, prior to performing a BMR. Starting in CDP 3.18 on Enterprise and Advanced Editions, this Linux LVM BMR process is automated through an on screen wizard. If you are restoring your system partition, you will need to boot your physical or virtual machine from either Live CD or PXE Network Boot. The automated BMR process can then be accessed through the CDP 3.0 web interface by selecting the BMR option for the disk safe associated with your chosen recovery point.

The Bare Metal Restore wizard will guide you through the following steps:

1) Choose the filesystem(s) to be restored

2) Select the host (use the IP address and port of your Live CD or PXE Boot Environment)

3) Define Restore Storage Configuration (this includes partition settings, choosing software RAID devices to restore, and setting up LVM Volume Groups to restore)

4) Map Filesystems

5) Select Restore options

6) Start the Restore process

You can monitor the status of the restore process through the Task History option within CDP 3.0.

Get complete instructions, including screenshots, in our wiki.

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We have found an issue with our current build (3.18.0) and we are taking it offline while we investigate and correct the issue. It should be available once again next week. Stay tuned to this blog or Twitter for further details.

Thanks for your patience.

*Update: CDP 3.18.1 is now available for download. More details to come via email update next week, or get a jump on the 3.18.1 release with details from our wiki.

Today’s Quick Tip focuses on restoring MySQL instances more efficiently in CDP 3.0.  This is a key desire of many of our customers who need to restore a large number of databases.

*Please note that this quick tip assumes you have the MySQL for CDP add-on enabled, as it is needed to lock and flush tables before a MySQL backup takes place.

If you are restoring an entire MySQL instance, it is more efficient to perform a file restore of the MySQL data directory than to restore databases individually. When databases are restored individually (see Restoring a MySQL Database), each row must be selected and inserted and this can take a long time.  In this case, we recommend shutting down your MySQL instance and restoring your MySQL data directory using the file restore feature (see Restoring Files).

We recommend following the following 5 steps to restore an entire MySQL instance:

1)     Identify the MySQL data directory

2)     Stop the MySQL instance

- Windows users use the Windows MySQL Administrator utility OR type net stop MySQL at a command prompt
- Linux users type the following command: /etc/init.d/mysql stop
- Linux users type /etc/init.d/mysql start

3)     Move the contents of the data directory to another location as a backup just in case (best practice)

4)     Use CDP to perform a file restore of the MySQL data directory

5)     Start the MySQL instance

- Windows users use the Windows MySQL Administrator utility OR type net start MySQL at a command prompt

Get complete instructions including screenshots in our wiki.

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Today’s Quick Tip focuses on recovery of lost passphrases for encrypted Disk Safes on CDP 3.0 Enterprise and Advanced editions.

Today’s Quick Tip focuses on backup and restore of individual cPanel accounts with CDP 3.0 Enterprise and Advanced editions.

You can restore the entire state of your WHM server and all cPanel accounts from a CDP recovery point by restoring all files or performing a BMR. However, you may occasionally need to restore individual cPanel accounts; possible scenarios include when a cancelled customer decides he wants to reactivate, or if there were accidental changes made to any of the account’s configurations in cPanel. What can you do in this case?

Create periodic cPanel account packages that get protected by CDP

Use the script (provided here with instructions) to create a package of all your cPanel accounts excluding the /home directory files. The resulting configuration backup will be placed in: /home/cpmove-USERNAME.tar.gz and will be automatically backed up by CDP as long as you have selected the /home file system or disk in your Disk Safe for protection.

Restore individual cPanel accounts when needed

1. Use CDP (as the server administrator) to restore the file /home/cpmove-USERNAME.tar.gz to an alternate location (e.g. /tmp)
2. Login to the cPanel server using SSH and run: # /scripts/restorepkg –force /tmp/cpmove-USERNAME.tar.gz
3. Restore the contents of the /home/USERNAME using CDP file restore

Get the script and review detailed directions in our wiki.

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