Technical Professional Training

NAKIVO Backup & Replication v10.7

Technical Professional
Training

www.nakivo.com
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Contents
Acronyms............................................................................................................................................... 8

Introduction........................................................................................................................................ 10

About the Technical Professional Training................................................................................... 10

Training Prerequisites..................................................................................................................... 10

About NAKIVO.................................................................................................................................. 10

Module 1: Architecture..................................................................................................................... 11

Module 1 Outline............................................................................................................................. 11

Solution Overview........................................................................................................................... 11

Solution Components..................................................................................................................... 12

Director........................................................................................................................................ 12

What is the Director?.............................................................................................................. 12

Director highlights.................................................................................................................. 13

Transporter.................................................................................................................................. 14

What is the Transporter?....................................................................................................... 14

Transporter highlights........................................................................................................... 15

How many Transporters should be deployed?................................................................... 15

How are Transporters selected for jobs?............................................................................ 16

Backup Repository...................................................................................................................... 16

What is a Backup Repository?............................................................................................... 16

What are the different Backup Repository types?.............................................................. 17

How many Backup Repositories should be deployed?...................................................... 18

How are backups stored?...................................................................................................... 18

How much data can be stored in a Backup Repository?................................................... 18

Backup Repository highlights................................................................................................ 18

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Scalability.......................................................................................................................................... 21

Horizontal Scalability.................................................................................................................. 21

Vertical Scalability....................................................................................................................... 21

Licensing and Editions.................................................................................................................... 22

Licensing...................................................................................................................................... 22

Editions......................................................................................................................................... 23

Licensing Rules............................................................................................................................ 24

Support......................................................................................................................................... 24

Module 1 Recap............................................................................................................................... 25

Module 2: Deployment..................................................................................................................... 26

Module 2 Outline............................................................................................................................. 26

Deployment Options....................................................................................................................... 27

System Requirements..................................................................................................................... 28

Hardware Requirements............................................................................................................ 28

Supported Operating Systems.................................................................................................. 29

Supported Web Browsers.......................................................................................................... 30

Deployment Scenarios.................................................................................................................... 30

Single-Site Deployment.............................................................................................................. 30

Distributed Deployment............................................................................................................. 30

Multi-Tenant Deployment.......................................................................................................... 31

Performance Tips............................................................................................................................ 31

Direct SAN Access for VMware vSphere................................................................................... 31

HotAdd for VMware vSphere..................................................................................................... 32

Improving WAN Performance................................................................................................... 32

Staging (Seeding) Initial Backups.............................................................................................. 32

Staging (Seeding) Initial Replicas............................................................................................... 33

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Deduplication Appliance Support................................................................................................. 33

Module 2 Recap............................................................................................................................... 34

Module 3: Features............................................................................................................................ 35

Module 3 Outline............................................................................................................................. 35

Supported Platforms....................................................................................................................... 35

Data Backup..................................................................................................................................... 36

VMware vSphere......................................................................................................................... 37

Microsoft Hyper-V....................................................................................................................... 37

Nutanix AHV................................................................................................................................ 37

Amazon EC2................................................................................................................................. 37

Physical Machine Backup........................................................................................................... 38

NAS Backup................................................................................................................................. 39

Microsoft 365 Backup................................................................................................................. 40

Oracle Database Backup............................................................................................................ 41

Backup Copy................................................................................................................................ 42

Backup to Tape............................................................................................................................ 42

Ransomware-Resilient Backups................................................................................................ 43

Backup to Cloud.......................................................................................................................... 44

Native integration with Amazon EBS................................................................................... 44

Native integration with Amazon S3...................................................................................... 45

Native integration with Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage............................................................ 45

Integration with other clouds............................................................................................... 46

Offsite Backup Tips..................................................................................................................... 47

Backup Size Reduction.................................................................................................................... 49

Backup Deduplication and Compression................................................................................. 49

Exclude Swap Files and Partitions............................................................................................. 50

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Exclude Unused Blocks.............................................................................................................. 50

Data Recovery.................................................................................................................................. 51

Instant File Recovery to Source................................................................................................. 51

Instant VM Recovery (Flash VM Boot)....................................................................................... 52

Cross-Platform Flash Boot for Physical Machines.................................................................. 53

Physical-to-Virtual Machine Recovery...................................................................................... 54

Instant Object Recovery for Microsoft Active Directory......................................................... 55

Instant Object Recovery for Microsoft Exchange Server........................................................ 56

Instant Object Recovery for Microsoft SQL Server................................................................. 56

NAS Recovery.............................................................................................................................. 57

Item Recovery for Microsoft 365............................................................................................... 57

Universal Object Recovery......................................................................................................... 58

Cross-Platform Recovery............................................................................................................ 59

Disaster Recovery............................................................................................................................ 60

Replication................................................................................................................................... 60

RTO and RPO improvement.................................................................................................. 61

Offsite replication tips............................................................................................................ 61

Disaster recovery with replicas............................................................................................. 62

Replication from Backup............................................................................................................ 63

Site Recovery............................................................................................................................... 65

Integration........................................................................................................................................ 66

Dell EMC DD Boost...................................................................................................................... 66

NEC HYDRAstor........................................................................................................................... 66

HPE StoreOnce Catalyst............................................................................................................. 67

HPE 3PAR and Nimble Storage.................................................................................................. 67

Microsoft Active Directory......................................................................................................... 68

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Aptare IT Analytics Integration.................................................................................................. 68

Backup as a Service (BaaS)............................................................................................................. 68

Multi-Tenancy.............................................................................................................................. 68

Self-Service................................................................................................................................... 69

Branding....................................................................................................................................... 70

License Delegation...................................................................................................................... 70

Module 3 Recap................................................................................................................................ 71

Module 4: Technical Benefits.......................................................................................................... 72

Module 4 Outline............................................................................................................................. 72

Flexibility........................................................................................................................................... 72

Multiple Deployment Options................................................................................................... 72

Small Footprint............................................................................................................................ 72

Scalability..................................................................................................................................... 72

Reliability.......................................................................................................................................... 73

Application and Database Support........................................................................................... 73

Encryption in Flight and at Rest................................................................................................. 74

Instant Verification...................................................................................................................... 75

Microsoft Exchange Log Truncation......................................................................................... 76

Microsoft SQL Server Log Truncation....................................................................................... 77

External Product Database Support......................................................................................... 78

Self-Backup.................................................................................................................................. 78

Users and Roles........................................................................................................................... 79

Performance.................................................................................................................................... 80

LAN-Free Data Transfer.............................................................................................................. 80

Deduplication Appliance Support............................................................................................. 80

Optimization for deduplication appliances......................................................................... 80

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Deduplication appliance configuration details................................................................... 81

Advanced Bandwidth Throttling............................................................................................... 81

Network Acceleration................................................................................................................. 82

Full Synthetic Data Storage........................................................................................................ 83

Native Change Tracking............................................................................................................. 83

Automation...................................................................................................................................... 83

Job Chaining................................................................................................................................. 83

Pre- and Post-Job Scripts............................................................................................................ 84

HTTP APIs..................................................................................................................................... 84

Job Grouping................................................................................................................................ 85

Usability............................................................................................................................................ 85

Easy Installation.......................................................................................................................... 85

Container Protection.................................................................................................................. 85

Web UI.......................................................................................................................................... 87

Calendar Dashboard.................................................................................................................. 87

Monitoring................................................................................................................................... 88

Global Search.............................................................................................................................. 88

Overview Dashboard.................................................................................................................. 89

Live Chat with Tech Support...................................................................................................... 90

Auto-Update................................................................................................................................ 90

Module 4 Recap............................................................................................................................... 91

Summary............................................................................................................................................. 92

Final Steps............................................................................................................................................. 92

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Acronyms
AES Advanced Encryption Standard
AMI Amazon Machine Image
API Application Programming Interface
AWS Amazon Web Services
BaaS Backup as a Service
CIFS Common Internet File System
CLI Command-line Interface
CPU Central Processing Unit
D2D2T Disk-to-Disk-to-Tape
DD Data Domain
DRaaS Disaster Recovery as a Service
EBS Elastic Block Storage
EC2 Elastic Compute Cloud
FC Fibre Channel
FTP File Transfer Protocol
GB Gigabyte
HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol
HTTPS Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure
I/O Input/Output
IDE Integrated Drive Electronics
IP Internet Protocol
iSCSI Internet Small Computer Systems Interface
LAN Local Area Network
LTO Linear Tape-Open
LTO3 Linear Tape-Open Generation 3
LUN Logical Unit Number
LVM Logical Volume Management
MB Megabyte

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MSP Managed Service Provider

NAS Network Attached Storage
NFS Network File System
NGT Nutanix Guest Tools
NTFS New Technology File System
OS Operating System
PMA Physical Machine Agent
RAM Random-access Memory
RBAC Role-based Access Control
RPO Recovery Point Objective
RTO Recovery Time Objective
RTT Round Trip Time
S3 Simple Storage Service
SaaS Software as a Service
SAN Storage Area Network
SCSI Small Computer Systems Interface
SSL Secure Socket Layer
TB Terabyte
TSL Transport Layer Security
UI User Interface
UUID Universally Unique Identifier
VM Virtual Machine
VPC Virtual Private Cloud
VPN Virtual Private Network
VSS Volume Shadow Copy Service
VTL Virtual Tape Library
WAN Wide Area Network

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Introduction
About the Technical Professional Training
The training is designed to give technical staff working with NAKIVO Backup & Replication a
complete understanding about the architecture, deployment, and use of this software solution.

After completing this training, you will:

• understand the solution’s architecture;

• be able to deploy the solution;
• know how to use the solution’s features;
• understand the solution’s advantages.

Training Prerequisites
This solution training is best suited for system administrators and IT personnel who have the
following knowledge and experience:

• Computer skills: A basic understanding of computer hardware and the Windows and Linux
operating systems
• Computer networking: An understanding of basic networking concepts, such as IP
addressing
• Virtualization: Experience using a virtualization platform

About NAKIVO
NAKIVO is a US-based corporation dedicated to delivering the ultimate backup, ransomware
protection and disaster recovery solution for virtual, physical, cloud and SaaS environments.
As one of the fastest-growing backup and ransomware recovery software vendors in the
industry, NAKIVO boasts 25 consecutive quarters of double-digit growth, 5-star online
community reviews, 98% customer satisfaction with support and a network of over 7,000
partners worldwide. Over 23,000 customers in 173 countries trust NAKIVO with protecting
their data, including major companies like Coca-Cola, Honda, Siemens and Cisco.

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Module 1: Architecture
Module 1 Outline
• Solution Overview
• Solution Components
• How Backups Are Stored
• Scalability
• Licensing and Editions

Solution Overview
NAKIVO Backup & Replication is a data protection and disaster recovery solution designed for
virtual, physical, cloud and software-as-a-service (SaaS) environments. The solution performs
backup, replication, and recovery for VMware vSphere VMs, Microsoft Hyper-V VMs, Nutanix
AHV VMs, Amazon EC2 instances, Windows and Linux physical servers and workstations, NAS
and other network shares, Microsoft 365 data, and Oracle Databases. Backups can be stored
onsite, offsite, in the cloud, and on tape.

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Solution Components
NAKIVO Backup & Replication is a software solution that can be installed on a virtual machine
(VM), a physical machine, or a network attached storage (NAS) device. The solution is
designed to use the maximum amount of central processing unit (CPU) and random-access
memory (RAM) compute resources to deliver top performance.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication consists of the following core components:

• Director is the central management instance and provides the web interface.
• Transporter is the component that processes and transfers data.
• Backup Repository is a folder for storing backups.

The Director and Transporter run as services. They can reside on a single machine or be
distributed across multiple machines. Components running on different platforms are
compatible with each other. For example, the Director and Transporter can be installed on a
Windows machine and another Transporter can be installed on a NAS device at a remote site.

Director
What is the Director?
The Director is the central point of management and provides a web-based user interface
(UI). The Director maintains the configuration, is used for creating and running jobs, and
manages all other components. The Director stores persistent data, such as the inventory,
configuration parameters, and job definitions.

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The Director:

• Can run on different platforms, including Windows, Linux, and NAS

• Has a web-based UI, allowing easy remote access
• Is optimized for parallel tasks and supports multiple concurrent jobs
• Has a built-in database, reducing footprint (no additional database server is required)*
• Can be integrated with third-party software via command-line interface (CLI) and
application programming interface (API)

* Note that it is possible to switch to an external database for the Director, which can be useful
in larger environments.

Director highlights
By default, the HTTPS web interface of the Director can be accessed on port 4443. A different
web interface port can be specified during installation. Automatic redirect is enabled from
HTTP port 80 to HTTPS port 4443 (or to a user-defined HTTPS port), simplifying access to the
UI. The Director service has the following names:

• On Windows: NAKIVO Backup & Replication Director (backup_replication-service.exe)

• On Linux: nkv-dirsvc

The Director keeps all persistent data in the userdata folder inside the Director installation folder.

By default, the Director’s built-in web server uses a self-signed TLS/SSL certificate. To replace
the default TLS/SSL certificate, a customer should follow these instructions.

Only one instance of the Director per customer should be installed. One Director can manage
multiple geographically-distributed servers, Transporters, and Backup Repositories.

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Transporter
What is the Transporter?
The Transporter does all of the heavy lifting. It performs actual data backup, replication, and
recovery. In addition, the Transporter carries out compression, deduplication, encryption, and
interaction with Backup Repositories. One Transporter can process multiple workloads, such
as backing up physical servers or workstations, VMs from multiple vCenter servers, Hyper-V
and ESXi hosts, and so on.

The Transporter:

• Can run on different platforms, including Windows, Linux, and NAS

• Is lightweight and efficient with resource utilization
• Is optimized for parallel tasks and supports multiple concurrent jobs
• Is stateless, neither requiring a database nor storing persistent data
• Is installed with the Director by default (and called Onboard Transporter in that case), so
that backup, replication, and recovery can be started right after software installation

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The Director manages all Transporters. An instance of the Transporter is automatically

installed along with the Director to enable backup, replication, and recovery out of the
box. After installation, a new Transporter must be added to the Configuration. Transporter
settings can be modified in the Configuration > Transporters section of the web interface.
Note that the Transporter can also be deployed directly from the Director.

Transporter highlights
One Transporter can run multiple concurrent tasks. A task is either an operation performed
by the Transporter on a single disk (such as backup, replication, or recovery) or a single
granular recovery session (such as file recovery, object recovery for Microsoft Exchange,
Microsoft SQL Server, or Active Directory). By default, the Transporter is set to process up to 6
tasks simultaneously. The number of simultaneous tasks can be increased or decreased. If a
job, for example, contains more virtual disks than the maximum number of concurrent tasks,
the disks are queued during the job run.

The Transporter service has the following names:

• On Windows: NAKIVO Backup & Replication Transporter (bhsvc.exe)

• On Linux: nkv-bhsvc

By default, the Transporter service listens to Director commands on port 9446. Customers
can specify a different port during Transporter installation. Transporters use an additional
range of ports to receive and transfer data between each other. The port range is only used
for transferring data between a pair of Transporters. The default port range is 9448–10000.
The port range can be edited in Configuration > Transporters.

The Transporter can use a client-server SSL encryption to protect communication with
the Director and other Transporters. By default, a self-signed TLS/SSL certificate is used.
Customers can replace the self-signed certificate with their own TLS/SSL certificate.

How many Transporters should be deployed?

In small and mid-sized environments (up to 100 VMs, physical servers, or cloud instances), one
Transporter per site or Amazon Web Services (AWS) region is enough. In large environments,
where a large number of VMs, physical servers, or cloud instances are processed simultaneously,
multiple Transporters can be deployed on the same site to distribute the workload.
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In multi-site deployments, customers can use network acceleration and traffic encryption
between a pair of Transporters. If a VM is replicated between two sites over a wide area
network (WAN), the Transporter on the source site can compress and encrypt data before
transferring it over the WAN; the Transporter on the target site decrypts and decompresses
data before writing it to the target server.

How are Transporters selected for jobs?

For multiple Transporter deployments, customers should determine which Transporter will
read data and which one will write data. The best Transporter is automatically selected based
on source or target host proximity, which is measured by using round trip time (RTT).

Transporters can also be selected manually on a per-job basis. Manual Transporter selection
overrides automatic selection rules. For backup jobs, the target Transporter is always the
one assigned to the Backup Repository. For recovery jobs, the source Transporter is always
the one assigned to the Backup Repository. For backup copy jobs, no Transporter selection is
possible since both the source and the target are repositories.

Backup Repository
What is a Backup Repository?
A Backup Repository is the location used by NAKIVO Backup & Replication to store backups.
By default, a Backup Repository is created automatically when NAKIVO Backup & Replication
is installed. This Backup Repository is called the Onboard Repository, and it is managed by
the Onboard Transporter.

When a Backup Repository is created, the Transporter creates the directory in the specified
location. This directory is used to store backup data and metadata.

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A Backup Repository is always managed by one Transporter, which is called the Assigned
Transporter. In other words, only the Assigned Transporter can read data from and write
data to a particular Backup Repository. At the same time, one Transporter can be assigned to
multiple Backup Repositories.

Each Backup Repository must be created or added to the Configuration > Backup
Repositories section of the web interface. NAKIVO Backup & Replication supports the
following locations for storing backup data:

• Common internet file system (CIFS) share

• Network file system (NFS) share
• Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
• Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)
• Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage
• Backblaze B2
• Azure Blob storage
• Deduplication appliance
• Local folder on the Transporter machine. With this option, customers can manually mount
any storage (such as FTP, FC, iSCSI, etc.) and use it to create a Backup Repository.

What are the different Backup Repository types?

There are three types of Backup Repositories in NAKIVO Backup & Replication.

• Incremental with full backups: The initial backup is full, subsequent backup job runs are
incremental, and full backups are created periodically based on the pre-configured job settings.
Built-in backup data deduplication cannot be enabled with this type of Backup Repository.
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Forever incremental: The initial backup is full, and all subsequent backups are incremental,
meaning that only changed data blocks (increments) are copied to the Backup Repository.
• SaaS: A Backup Repository that must be created for storing Microsoft 365 data. Only local
folders are supported as a location for SaaS repositories.

How much data can be stored in a Backup Repository?

NAKIVO Backup & Replication can store up to 128 TB of data in a single Backup Repository.
There is no limit on the number of Backup Repositories per installation.

Backups can be compressed and deduplicated at the block level across an entire Backup
Repository to save storage space. Note that block-level deduplication is available only for the
forever-incremental repository type.

Backup Repository highlights

A Backup Repository can be either attached or detached. An attached Backup Repository can
be used to run backup or recovery. A detached Backup Repository cannot be used to read
or write data. To ensure data consistency, a Backup Repository should be detached before
moving or copying it.

How many Backup Repositories should be deployed?

If a customer plans to store a large number of backups (over 20 TB), it’s recommended that
multiple smaller Backup Repositories be created instead of a single one. This would make
backups more manageable and more portable, since a Backup Repository cannot be split into
individual backups.

How are backups stored?

By default, NAKIVO Backup & Replication uses the incremental-with-full-backups type for the
onboard Backup Repository. The initial job run creates a full backup. On subsequent job runs,
data blocks that have changed since the previous backup are stored in incremental backup
files. To start a new incremental chain, a new full backup is made at the time defined in the
job settings. The previous incremental chain cannot be deleted until the new incremental
chain is started.

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Customers can also choose the forever-incremental option by disabling the Store backups in
separate files option in the repository settings when creating the repository. After the first
full backup, all subsequent backups send only the changed data to the target—a periodic full
backup is not required. After each backup, NAKIVO Backup & Replication creates a recovery
point that references all blocks required to reconstruct the machine as of this recovery time.

If the amount of changes in a 100-GB VM is just 500 MB, only 500 MB of new data is added
to the Backup Repository. However, the new recovery point references the complete set of
blocks that are required to restore the entire VM as of this backup time.

Here’s an example. Let’s say a backup for a VM runs every day. For the sake of simplicity, let’s
assume that the VM initially has only 2 data blocks, A and B.

• The first full backup runs on Sunday; blocks A and B are backed up.
• On Monday, an incremental backup finds that block A was removed from the VM, while a
new one, block C, was added to the VM; block C is backed up.
• On Tuesday, an incremental backup finds that block B was removed from the VM, while a
new one, block D, was added to the VM; block D is backed up.

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Here’s how the VM would actually look like on each of the three days:

And here’s how the recovery points are stored in the Backup Repository:

If a customer deletes the Monday recovery point, no data blocks are removed from the Backup
Repository, as blocks B and C are also referenced by recovery points from Sunday and Tuesday.

NOTE: All data blocks are stored in the files under the raw folder inside the NakivoBackup
folder. The blocks inside each file may belong to multiple VMs and recovery points.
Information about backups and recovery points is stored in folders named after the
universally unique identifier (UUID) of each backup. Global metadata of the Backup
Repository is stored inside the .desc and .desc2 files.

IMPORTANT: Customers should not modify or delete any files inside the NakivoBackup folder.
Modifying or deleting any file of the Backup Repository may damage the backups.

For storing Microsoft 365 backups, a special Backup Repository for Microsoft 365 data should
be created. To use the SaaS Backup Repository for all Microsoft 365-related activities, the
following conditions must be met:

• A remote Transporter assigned to the SaaS Backup Repository must be installed/updated

manually, otherwise this type of repository is unavailable.

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• Only local folders are supported as a location for SaaS Backup Repositories.
• Before creating a SaaS Backup Repository on Linux machines, provide read and write
permissions to the local folder where the repository will be located.

Scalability
NAKIVO Backup & Replication is designed to protect virtual environments of all sizes. A
default installation (Director and Transporter) can simultaneously protect multiple VM hosts
and/or physical machines in a single site or multiple Amazon EC2 instances in a single AWS
region. A customer can scale the solution to protect hundreds of hosts and/or physical
machines, or thousands of VMs or cloud instances in a single site or in multiple sites.

Horizontal Scalability
The solution can be scaled out by deploying more Transporters and Backup Repositories. For
example, if a customer needs to back up or replicate hundreds of VMs simultaneously, they can
deploy multiple Transporters to distribute the workload between them. This improves performance,
provided that there is no other bottleneck (for example, in regard to disk I/O or network bandwidth).

For customers who need to back up or replicate VMs across multiple sites, it’s
recommended that at least one Transporter be deployed in each site so that network
acceleration can be used between sites.

Backup storage can also be scaled out by creating multiple Backup Repositories on different storage
devices instead of a single Backup Repository on a single storage device. Scaling can improve the
input/output (I/O) performance and increase the number of concurrent backup tasks.

Vertical Scalability
NAKIVO Backup & Replication can be scaled up by adding CPU and RAM compute resources
to Transporters. The Director does not require scaling in most cases. However, if a customer
has a large environment with more than 1,000 VMs, the Director may require additional CPU
and RAM resources.
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Licensing and Editions

Licensing
NAKIVO Backup & Replication is available in 5 editions with the following types of licenses:

Perpetual licensing, per CPU socket

NAKIVO Backup & Replication can be licensed on a perpetual per-socket basis for VMware
vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Nutanix AHV environments. A license is assigned for each
socket on the source hypervisor host. Only the source servers where customers perform data
backup and replication must be licensed. Monitoring for VMware can be licensed on the per-
socket basis; a license is required for each socket on a host where you plan to monitor VMs.
Perpetual licenses come with one year of free Standard Support.

Perpetual licensing for Oracle Database backup and recovery

Oracle Database backup and recovery via RMAN can be licensed on a perpetual basis per
database (available with an Enterprise Plus edition only). Customers must purchase a license
for every Oracle database that they plan to protect in NAKIVO Backup & Replication.

Perpetual licensing for physical machine backup

NAKIVO Backup & Replication can be licensed per server/workstation. This type of licensing
covers Windows- and Linux-based physical servers and workstations. For the Pro Essentials
edition, licenses for physical machines are sold in bundles of 5. A single order can include up
to 10 bundles (50 servers) for physical servers and up to 30 bundles (150 workstations) for
physical workstations. One year of Standard Support is included for each order.

Perpetual licensing for NAS backup

NAS Backup can be licensed on the per-terabyte basis and consumed in half-terabyte
increments. One licensed terabyte (TB) of file share source object size accounts for 1000 GB
of file share source object size. Perpetual licenses for NAS Backup come with one year of free
Standard Support.

Subscription licensing, per workload

NAKIVO Backup & Replication can be licensed on a per-workload basis. A workload is one
of the following: VMware vSphere VM, Microsoft Hyper-V VM, Nutanix AHV VM, Amazon EC2
instance, or physical machine (1 Windows/Linux Server or 3 Windows/Linux Workstations)
that customers plan to protect with NAKIVO Backup & Replication. Only the source workloads
where customers plan to perform data backup and replication must be licensed. Monitoring
for VMware can be licensed on the per-workload subscription basis; a license is required for
each monitored VM. Subscription licenses come with 24/7 Support.

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Subscription licensing for NAS backup

NAS Backup can be licensed on the per-workload subscription basis. In a workload-based
license, one workload equals 500 GB of source file share data. Subscription licenses for NAS
Backup come with 24/7 Support.

Subscription licensing for Microsoft 365 backup

A subscription for Microsoft 365 is licensed on a per-user, per-month basis. The license
can be purchased together with any edition (Basic, Pro Essentials, Enterprise Essentials,
Pro, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus) and combined with any license type (perpetual or
subscription). One year of 24/7 Support is included by default in subscription licenses for
Microsoft 365. At least 10 licenses should be purchased per order.

When combined with a perpetual license, the support end date of the perpetual license and
end date of the subscription license for Microsoft 365 must be aligned. The support level may
be Standard for perpetual sockets and 24/7 for a Microsoft 365 subscription. For perpetual
sockets, an upgrade from Standard Support to 24/7 Support can be additionally purchased.

The table below provides an overview of available licensing options.

VMware Microsoft Nutanix Amazon Physical Microsoft Oracle NAS

License Type
vSphere Hyper-V AHV EC2 Machine 365 Database Backup

Perpetual

Subscription

Editions
The following editions of NAKIVO Backup & Replication are available:

• Enterprise Plus: Delivers all the features and functionality of the Enterprise edition, plus
Oracle Database protection, Role-Based Access Control, and HTTP API. The number of
licenses that can be purchased per order is unlimited.
• Enterprise: Provides an advanced data protection feature set, including Site Recovery,
Multi-Tenancy, Self-Service, Branding, and Active Directory integration. The number of
licenses that can be purchased per order is unlimited.
• Enterprise Essentials: Intended to help small businesses protect their production
infrastructure at an affordable price, the Enterprise Essentials edition has the same feature
set as the Enterprise edition. The minimum order for the Enterprise Essentials edition is 2
sockets/5 workloads and the maximum is 6 sockets/50 workloads per organization.

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• Pro: Provides the same data protection feature set as the Pro Essentials edition. Features
do not include Site Recovery, Multi-Tenancy, Self-Service, Branding, HTTP API, or Active
Directory integration. The number of licenses that can be purchased per order is unlimited.
• Pro Essentials: Intended to help small businesses protect their production infrastructures
at an affordable price, the Pro Essentials edition has the same feature set as the Pro
edition. The minimum order for the Pro Essentials edition is 2 sockets/5 workloads and the
maximum is 6 sockets/50 workloads per organization.

Licensing Rules
• Perpetual and subscription licenses cannot be combined in one license, unless the
perpetual license is combined with a Backup for Microsoft 365 subscription.
• A subscription license for Backup for Microsoft 365 can be combined with both perpetual
and subscription (per-workload) licenses.
• Monitoring for VMware:
• Сan be purchased together with the same edition of NAKIVO Backup & Replication,
except Basic.
• Can be combined with the same license type (Perpetual or Per-workload Subscription)
• When combined with NAKIVO Backup & Replication, the number of licensed units must
be the same
• NAS Backup. Minimum license units for NAS Backup is one workload (500 GB of source file share
data) in a subscription-based license or 500 GB of source file share data in a per-terabyte license.

Refer to NAKIVO’s pricing page for the most recent information about licensing.

Support
NAKIVO Backup & Replication offers two levels of technical support:

• Standard Support provides coverage from Monday to Friday during business hours only
as defined in the Customer Support Policy. One year of Standard Support is included in all
new perpetual license purchases.
• 24/7 Support provides coverage 24 hours/day, 7 days/week, 365 days/year via phone, chat,
or email. 24/7 Support comes with all subscription license purchases for the entire licensed
period.

Customers can purchase a Support Upgrade to move from Standard to 24/7 Support. If customers
want to upgrade to a higher-tier edition and have previously purchased additional years of support,
their support must be upgraded as well.

To extend support services for another month, customers can purchase Expired Support Renewal.

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Module 1 Recap
In this module, you have learned that:

• The Director is the central point of management, providing web UI, configuration, and
scheduling. The Director keeps persistent data.
• A Transporter is the engine for data processing and Backup Repository management. The
Onboard Transporter is installed by default. Multiple Transporters can be deployed.
• A Backup Repository is the location used by a Transporter to store backups. A Backup
Repository can be created on a local disk or on a share. The following Backup Repository types
are available: forever-incremental, incremental-with-full-backups, and a special SaaS repository
for Microsoft 365 data.
• The solution is scalable enough to protect hundreds of hosts and thousands of production
machines. It can be scaled out by deploying more Transporters and scaled up by providing
more compute resources to Transporters.
• NAKIVO Backup & Replication can be licensed per CPU socket or per workload. A Backup for
Microsoft 365 subscription can be licensed per user (mailbox). The solution can be licensed on
a perpetual or a subscription basis.
• NAKIVO Backup & Replication offers Standard Support (available from Monday to Friday during
business hours) and 24/7 Support via phone, chat, and email.

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Module 2: Deployment
Module 2 Outline
• Supported Platforms
• Deployment Options
• System Requirements
• Deployment Scenarios
• Performance Tips
• Deduplication Appliance Support

Supported Platforms
NAKIVO Backup & Replication offers data protection functionality for the following platforms:

VMware vSphere
• VMware vSphere v5.5–v7.0.3
• vSphere Server v5.5–v7.0.3
• Standalone ESXi v5.5–v7.0.3
• VMware Cloud Director v10.2.1-10.3.1

Microsoft Hyper-V
• Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012, 2012(R2), 2016, 2019, 20H2, 2022

Nutanix AHV
• Nutanix AHV 5.10 (LTS), v5.15 (LTS), v5.20 (LTS)

Amazon EC2
• All AWS regions
• All instance types
• Virtual private cloud (VPC) and Classic

Physical Machines
• Windows Servers and Workstations
• Microsoft Windows Server 2019, 2016, 2012R2, 2012, 2008R2
• Microsoft Windows 10 Pro, 10 Home, 11
• Linux Servers and Workstations
• Ubuntu 20.04 Server, Ubuntu 18.04 Server, Ubuntu 16.04 Server (x64)
• Ubuntu v18.04–20.04 (Desktop) LTS (x64)
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• RHEL v7.4–9.0 (x64)

• SLES 12 SP3–15 SP2 (x64)
• CentOS v7.0–8.4 (x64)

Oracle Database
• Oracle Database 19c
• Oracle Database 18c
• Oracle Database 12c R2
• Oracle Database 11g R2

Microsoft 365
• Exchange Online
• OneDrive for Business
• SharePoint Online

NOTE
Make sure that:
• the hypervisor is updated with the latest patch; and
• full administrative permissions are provided.

Learn more about the supported platforms here.

Deployment Options
NAKIVO Backup & Replication components (Director and Transporter) can be deployed on different
hardware and software platforms using one or more of the following deployment options:

• Virtual Appliance for VMware vSphere

Download a pre-configured VMware virtual appliance and import it to a VMware vSphere
environment.
• Virtual Appliance for Nutanix AHV
Download a pre-configured Nutanix virtual appliance and import it to a Nutanix AHV
environment.
• Windows
Download and run the installer for Windows to install all NAKIVO Backup & Replication
components (Director, Transporter, and Backup Repository) on a physical or virtual
machine running Windows.

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• Linux
Download and run the installer command for Linux to install all NAKIVO Backup &
Replication components (Director, Transporter, and Backup Repository) on a physical or
virtual machine running Linux.

• Amazon Machine Image

Deploy NAKIVO Backup & Replication in Amazon Cloud from a pre-configured Amazon
Machine Image (AMI).

• Installation on NAS
Download and run the installer for NAS to install NAKIVO Backup & Replication directly
on supported NAS servers (Synology, QNAP, ASUSTOR, Western Digital, NETGEAR, or
TrueNAS CORE).

• Installation on Raspberry Pi
Download and run the installer for Raspberry Pi and install NAKIVO Backup & Replication
on a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ machine.

System Requirements
Hardware Requirements
NAKIVO Backup & Replication can be installed on a virtual or physical machine, deployed into
a VMware vSphere or Nutanix AHV environment as a virtual appliance, or into Amazon EC2 as
an Amazon Machine Image. The minimum hardware requirements are:

VM or Physical Server

Director and Transporter

• CPU: x86-64, 2 cores
• RAM: 4 GB + 250 MB for each concurrent job
• Free space: 10 GB

Transporter only
• CPU: x86-64, 2 cores
• RAM: 2 GB + 250 MB for each concurrent job
• Free space: 5 GB

NAS Device
• Vendor: Synology, QNAP, Western Digital, ASUSTOR, NETGEAR, FreeNAS
• Director and Transporter

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• CPU: x86-64, 2 cores, ARMv7/ARMv8

• RAM: 1 GB
• Free space: 10 GB
• Transporter only
• CPU: x86-64, 2 cores; ARMv7/ARMv8
• RAM: 512 MB
• Free space: 5 GB

Full list of supported NAS models.

Supported Operating Systems

NAKIVO Backup & Replication can be installed on the following operating systems:

Windows
• Windows Server 2012, 2012 R2, 2016, 2019, 20H2, 2022 (21H2) (x64)
• Windows 11 (x64) (21H2)
• Windows 10 Home/Pro (x64) (20H2/21H1/21H2)
• Windows 8 Professional

Linux
• Ubuntu Server 16.04 LTS - 22.04 LTS (x64)
• RHEL v7.4–9.0 (x64)
• SLES 12 SP3–15 SP4 (x64)
• CentOS v7.0–8.4 (x64)
• CentOS Stream 8 (x64)

NAS
• ASUSTOR ADM v3.5 - v4.1
• Synology DSM v6.0 - v7.0.1
• QNAP QTS v4.3 - v4.5.1; v5.0
• QNAP QuTS Hero h4.5.3
• WD MyCloud firmware v5
• NETGEAR ReadyNAS OS v6.9 - 6.10.3
• FreeNAS 11.3

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• TrueNAS CORE 12.0-13.0

• For a generic ARM-based NAS device, a Linux OS supported by NAKIVO Backup &
Replication is required.

Supported Web Browsers

NAKIVO Backup & Replication UI can be accessed through the following web browsers:

• Google Chrome: Version 80

• Mozilla Firefox: Version 74

View the most recent system requirements here.

Deployment Scenarios
Single-Site Deployment
For a single-site deployment, both the Director and Transporter can usually be installed on a
single VM, physical machine, or even NAS device. Another option is deploying NAKIVO Backup
& Replication as a virtual appliance for VMware vSphere or Nutanix AHV environments. A
single-site deployment allows backup, replication, and recovery of multiple machines from
multiple hosts in a single site.

Distributed Deployment
When deploying in a multisite environment in which back up and/or replication will be
performed over WAN, install the Director and Transporter on one site and at least one
Transporter in another site. The same applies to deployment as a virtual appliance. The
virtual appliance should be deployed on one site and at least one Transporter should be
deployed on another site. When using distributed deployment, make sure that the remote
Transporter(s) is accessible by the Director and the local Transporter.

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Multi-Tenant Deployment
Multi-tenancy allows customers to create multiple isolated tenants within one NAKIVO
Backup & Replication deployment. Tenants are managed from a single pane of glass,
where a master administrator can allocate hosts, clusters, VMs, Backup Repositories, and
Transporters to tenant infrastructures. The tenants can also be granted access to their own
dashboards via the web Self-Service Portal. By using the Self-Service Portal, tenants offload
backup, replication, and recovery tasks from service providers.

Customers can use single-site deployment or distributed deployment for the Transporter(s)
and Director for multi-tenancy, except that the Director is configured to run in multi-tenant
mode. Learn more.

Performance Tips
Direct SAN Access for VMware vSphere
If a customer’s VMware vSphere VMs reside on a Fibre Channel or an iSCSI Storage Area
Network (SAN) device, NAKIVO Backup & Replication can use direct SAN access for data
transfer. This access mode can increase the speed of backup and replication jobs while
decreasing the load on the production network. NAKIVO Backup & Replication relies on the
VMware VDDK library to provide SAN support and does not make any write or modification
operations in the SAN logical unit numbers (LUNs). That is, the solution does not compromise
data integrity or interfere with the data of running VMs on datastores. Learn more.

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HotAdd for VMware vSphere

Another approach to improving VMware vSphere VM backup performance is using the
HotAdd mode. NAKIVO Backup & Replication can read data directly from VM datastores,
bypassing the host’s TCP/IP stack that would otherwise impact every VM on the host and slow
down the data transfer. NAKIVO Backup & Replication can HotAdd (mount) VM snapshots and
read VM data directly from VM datastores through the host’s storage I/O stack.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication automatically tries to enable the HotAdd mode on a VM’s SCSI
disks. This feature is not available for VMs with integrated drive electronics (IDE) disks.

Improving WAN Performance

To achieve maximum WAN performance during a backup, backup copy, or replication job:

• Install a new Transporter at a remote site.

• Add this Transporter to Configuration.
• Create a new Backup Repository or Edit an existing Backup Repository and select the remote
Transporter in the Assigned Transporter dropdown menu. VM data travels as follows:

• Edit the backup job and make sure Network Acceleration is enabled.

To improve WAN performance of a replication job, perform steps 1, 2, and 4.

Staging (Seeding) Initial Backups

Since production machines are often large, the initial full backup can be time-consuming when
performed over WAN. To speed up the initial backup and save bandwidth, backups can be staged:

• Create a new Backup Repository.

• Create and run the initial backup to a removable media (such as a USB hard drive).
• Detach the repository.
• Transfer the media to a new location.
• Re-attach the repository after transferring the media to a new location.
• Start running an incremental backup to the new location. Learn more.

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Staging (Seeding) Initial Replicas

The initial full replication over WAN can be time-consuming and can place an undesirable
load on the network. To speed up the initial VM replication and save bandwidth, replication
can be staged:

• Transfer VMs to the target site via a removable media (such as a USB hard drive).
• Create a replication job that will use the transferred VMs as replicas. Learn more.

Deduplication Appliance Support

NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides a special Backup Repository optimized for
deduplication appliances, such as NEC Hydrastor, EMC Data Domain, and HPE StoreOnce.

Deduplication appliances are designed to reduce data size and operate best with large-
block sequential I/O from backup software. If the architecture of a Backup Repository is
not optimized for deduplication appliances, VM backup may appear to be random I/O.
Deduplication appliances are not designed to handle such random I/O. As a result, VM
backup performance significantly declines.

When tested in a customer environment, NAKIVO Backup & Replication has demonstrated
backup speeds that are up to 53 times faster than the regular Backup Repository. With a high-
end NEC Hydrastor deduplication appliance as a target, NAKIVO Backup & Replication backed
up customer VMs at an incredible 3.2 GB/s.

Customers can choose one of the following options:

• The default Backup Repository (also known as an incremental-with-full-backups repository)

with an architecture optimized for efficient operation on deduplication appliances. This is a
repository that performs incremental backups with periodic active or synthetic full backups.
The file structure is also improved in this repository, and each backup along with its recovery
points is stored in a separate folder for better manageability. Note that the solution’s
proprietary backup deduplication and compression are not available for this repository.
• The forever-incremental Backup Repository, which is optimized for generic storage systems
and allows the use of global data deduplication and compression.

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Module 2 Recap
In this module, you have learned that:

• NAKIVO Backup & Replication can be deployed as a virtual appliance or Amazon Machine
Image; the solution can also be installed on a virtual or physical machine or on a NAS device.
• Solution components have low minimum hardware requirements.
• Deployment scenarios include single-site deployment, distributed deployment for multiple
sites, and multi-tenant deployment. Single site deployment is enough in most cases.
• NAKIVO Backup & Replication performance can be improved by using Direct SAN access and
network acceleration, and seeding the initial backup or replica.
• NAKIVO Backup & Replication supports integration with deduplication appliances (NEC
Hydrastor, EMC Data Domain, HPE StoreOnce, and Quantum DXi) ensuring high backup
performance and storage space savings.

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Module 3: Features
Module 3 Outline
This module contains a comprehensive overview of NAKIVO Backup & Replication features.
As a feature-rich solution, NAKIVO Backup & Replication offers enterprise-grade backup,
replication, and recovery of VMs, physical servers and workstations, cloud instances, cloud
apps (Microsoft 365), and Oracle Databases.

• Supported Platforms
• Data Backup
• Backup Size Reduction
• Data Recovery
• Disaster Recovery
• Integration
• BaaS

Supported Platforms
NAKIVO Backup & Replication offers data protection functionality for the following platforms:

VMware vSphere
• VMware vSphere v5.5–v7.0.3
• vSphere Server v5.5–v7.0.3
• Standalone ESXi v5.5–v7.0.3
• VMware Cloud Director v10.2.1-10.3.3.1

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Microsoft Hyper-V
• Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012, 2012(R2), 2016, 2019, 20H2, 2022

Nutanix AHV
• Nutanix AHV 5.15 - 5.20 (LTS)

Amazon EC2
• All AWS regions
• All instance types
• Virtual private cloud (VPC) and Classic

Physical Machines

• Windows Servers and Workstations

• Microsoft Windows Server 2012 - 2022 (21H2) (x64)
• Microsoft Windows 10 Home/Pro, Windows 11 (x64)
• Linux Servers and Workstations
• Ubuntu Server 16.04-22.04 LTS (x64)
• Ubuntu Desktop 18.04–22.04 LTS (x64)
• RHEL v7.0–9.0 (x64)
• SLES 12 SP1–15 SP4 (x64)
• CentOS v7.0–8.4 (x64)
• CentOS Stream 8 (x64)

Data Backup
Incremental VM Backup
A backup is a point-in-time copy of a physical server, VM, or EC2 instance that is stored in
a Backup Repository. With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, backups can be stored locally,
offsite, and in private/public clouds. To set up a backup, create a Backup Repository and
create a backup job.

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VMware vSphere
NAKIVO Backup & Replication uses VMware vSphere Storage APIs – Data Protection to
perform agentless, image-based backup and replication of vCenter-managed and
standalone ESXi workloads.

The backup and replication technology relies on VM snapshots. Every time backup or replication
is executed, a temporary VM snapshot is taken. This temporary snapshot is used by the
Transporter to retrieve VM data. Once the job is complete, the snapshot is deleted automatically.

Microsoft Hyper-V
NAKIVO Backup & Replication uses Microsoft Hyper-V checkpoints for backup and replication.
Checkpoints are the set of files that keep the current state, data, and hardware configuration
of a VM at a particular point of time (similar to VMware snapshots). When creating a backup,
NAKIVO Backup & Replication creates a checkpoint of a VM and reads data from it to proceed
with the backup.

Nutanix AHV
In a Nutanix AHV environment, NAKIVO Backup & Replication uses Nutanix Guest Tools to
create an application-consistent snapshot of the source VM.

Amazon EC2
NAKIVO Backup & Replication uses native Elastic Block Storage (EBS) snapshots to capture the
data of EC2 instances. Customers can choose to process all volumes attached to the source
instance or skip a certain volume. Once a snapshot of an EBS volume is taken, NAKIVO Backup &
Replication creates a temporary volume from which data is read and transferred to the Backup
Repository. The temporary volume is read by a NAKIVO Backup & Replication Transporter as a
raw block device, eliminating any possible file system overhead or network load bottleneck.
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A backup can be full or incremental. During incremental backups, NAKIVO Backup & Replication
copies only the blocks of data that have changed since the last backup session.

Physical Machine Backup

With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, customers can back up both Windows and Linux physical
servers and workstations while ensuring the consistency of applications and databases.
Physical machine backup jobs are incremental. NAKIVO Backup & Replication uses a
proprietary change tracking method, meaning that only changed data blocks are transferred
to the Backup Repository. This saves time and cuts storage costs.

To ensure physical machines are successfully backed up or recovered, add a new physical
machine to the Inventory. Support for physical machines is enabled via the Physical Machine
Agent (PMA) deployed in the physical machine OS. Communication between the Director and
the PMA is secured using a certificate and a pre-shared key.

To create a physical machine backup job in NAKIVO Backup & Replication:

• Identify the physical machine for backup.

• Choose a backup repository for storing backups.
• Set the backup job schedule.
• Specify the retention policy.
• Configure the backup job options.

Once the physical machine backup job has started, NAKIVO Backup & Replication captures
the necessary data blocks from the physical machine and sends them to the selected
Backup Repository for storage. The backed-up data can then be accessed and recovered
whenever needed.
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NAS Backup
With NAS Backup, customers can back up file shares on NAS devices, as well as Windows and
Linux machines, via CIFS/NFS protocols. Customers can create backups for specific shares
or folders within shares. The feature works with the NFS 3.x, SMB 2.x, and SMB 3.x protocols
and supports incremental backup to enable the efficient use of system resources when
processing large volumes of data. Customers can restore the entire file share or specific items
from file share backups to a custom location.

To start using this feature:

1. Add the CIFS/NFS share you need to protect to the NAKIVO Backup & Replication inventory.
2. Create a local backup repository.
3. Create a file backup job and use the local repository as a target. Make sure the repository
doesn’t contain backups with immutability enabled.
4. Configure a schedule or run the job on demand.
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Microsoft 365 Backup

With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, customers can perform incremental backups of Exchange
Online, OneDrive for Business, SharePoint Online, and Teams data. Users can perform
incremental backup of the following Microsoft 365 items:

• Exchange Online user, group, and shared mailboxes;

• OneDrive for Business user accounts;
• SharePoint Online Team, Communication, and personal sites;
• Public and private Teams.

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To start using this feature:

• Add the Microsoft 365 accounts to the Inventory.

• Create a Microsoft SaaS Backup Repository.
• Create a Microsoft 365 job to start backing up Microsoft 365 data.

Oracle Database Backup

NAKIVO Backup & Replication backs up and recovers Oracle Databases via RMAN, the built-
in Oracle backup and recovery functionality. NAKIVO Backup & Replication uses an agent to
run scripts/execute RMAN commands for backup and recovery operations.

To start the backup process, certain settings should be pre-configured in RMAN, including
the backup destination. Then the Oracle database should be added to the Inventory in
NAKIVO Backup & Replication. Oracle backup jobs can be created and entire databases
recovered to the destination pre-configured in RMAN from the NAKIVO Backup &
Replication web-based interface.

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Backup Copy
Backups can be lost for a number of reasons. Having more than one copy of business-critical
backup is vital for ensuring that data can be recovered. Backup Copy jobs provide a simple
yet powerful way of creating and maintaining copies of backups.

Backup Copy jobs copy backups from one Backup Repository to another, without affecting
the source VMs, instances or physical servers/workstations. The data of the VMs (instances) is
read only once, while backups can be copied to one or multiple locations.

Backup copy jobs can be automatically triggered by chaining backup copy jobs to run after
successful backups.

Backup to Tape
NAKIVO Backup & Replication can back up workloads to physical tape libraries or AWS virtual tape
libraries. NAKIVO Backup & Replication makes it possible to implement the disk-to-disk-to-tape
(D2D2T) backup strategy, in which backups are stored on a disk for fast operational recovery, and
copied to a tape (while the repository is detached) for archiving and long-term storage.

In NAKIVO Backup & Replication, the process of sending backups to tape consists of two stages.

Stage 1: Creating a backup and storing it in a Backup Repository

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Stage 2: the backup from the Backup Repository to a tape library

NAKIVO Backup & Replication supports Linear Tape-Open (LTO) tape libraries and standalone
tape drives starting from generation 3 (LTO3) or later, as well as AWS Virtual Tape Library (VTL).

The Native Tape support is fully integrated into NAKIVO Backup & Replication and allows
customers to administer all backup and restore operations on tapes directly from the web-
based interface. Saving data on tapes offers the following data managing options: storing
full and incremental backups, applying user-defined retention settings to the archived data,
selecting restore points, and so on.

Ransomware-Resilient Backups
NAKIVO Backup & Replication offers multiple options for protecting backup data from
accidental deletion, modification or ransomware encryption by making backups immutable.
Immutability relies on the write-once-read-many (WORM) model.

• Backups sent to local Linux-based repositories can be made immutable for as long as
needed. Only a root user can lift or change immutability.
• Backups sent to Amazon S3, Azure Blob, Backblaze B2, and Wasabi can be made
immutable in NAKIVO Backup & Replication using the native cloud object locking
technology. Once set, immutability cannot be lifted by anyone, not even the root user.
• The solution can be deployed as a hardened Linux-based virtual appliance (VMware or
Nutanix AHV VA) or Amazon Machine Image (AMI). Backups sent to the repository deployed
as part of a hardened (more secure) VA or AMI can be made immutable, and immutability
cannot be lifted by anyone, not even the root user.

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Backup to Cloud
NAKIVO Backup & Replication offers a great way of protecting business-critical data by letting
customers send backup copies to Amazon S3, Wasabi, Backblaze B2, Azure Blob, Amazon
EBS, or any other cloud that supports running VMs or instances.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication helps reduce offsite backup costs with features like Incremental
Backup, Exclude Swap Files and Partitions, Backup Compression, and others. Using NAKIVO
Backup & Replication, customers can keep entire environments in the cloud or use Amazon
S3, Wasabi, Backblaze B2, Azure Blob, or Amazon EBS as a storage for backups.

Native integration with Amazon EBS

To integrate the solution with Amazon EBS:

1. Register with Amazon Web Services and obtain the AWS Security Credentials.
2. Add AWS account in Configuration > Inventory.
3. Create a new Transporter with the “Amazon EC2” type. The Director:
a. creates a new EC2 instance in the selected region;
b. injects a Transporter into the created instance.
4. Create a new Backup Repository by clicking Settings > Add Backup Repository. The Director:
a. provisions, attaches, and configures the EBS storage;
b. creates a Backup Repository.
5. Start creating and running backup jobs to AWS cloud.

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Native integration with Amazon S3

To integrate the solution with Amazon S3:

1. Create an AWS account and obtain the AWS Security Credentials (AWS Access Key ID and
Secret Access Key).
2. Add an AWS account to the NAKIVO Backup & Replication Inventory.
3. Create a new Backup Repository by selecting Settings > Add Backup Repository.
4. In the Create Backup Repository wizard, choose the Cloud repository type, select Amazon
S3 as the vendor, set its name and location, and configure the repository settings.
5. Click Finish to complete Backup Repository creation.

Native integration with Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage

To integrate the solution with Wasabi:

1. Create a Wasabi account and obtain a Wasabi Access Key ID and Secret Access Key.
2. Add a Wasabi account to the NAKIVO Backup & Replication Inventory.
3. Create a new Backup Repository by selecting Settings > Add Backup Repository.
4. In the Create Backup Repository wizard, choose the Cloud repository type, select Wasabi as
the vendor, set its name and location, and configure the repository settings.
5. Click Finish to complete backup repository creation.

Native integration with Azure Blob Storage

To integrate the solution with Azure Blob:

1. Configure your Microsoft Azure account to work with NAKIVO Backup & Replication and
obtain the client ID, tenant ID, and client secret.
2. Add the Microsoft Azure storage account to the NAKIVO Backup & Replication inventory.
3. Create a new Backup Repository by selecting Settings > Add Backup Repository.
4. In the Create Backup Repository wizard, choose the Cloud repository type, select Azure Blob
Storage as the vendor, set its name and location, and configure the repository settings.
5. Click Finish to complete Backup Repository creation.

Native integration with Backblaze B2

To integrate the solution with Backblaze B2:

1. Log in to your Backblaze account, create a new application key, and obtain keyID and
applicationKey.
2. Add the Backblaze account to the NAKIVO Backup & Replication inventory.
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3. Create a new Backup Repository by selecting Settings > Add Backup Repository.
4. In the Create Backup Repository wizard, choose the Cloud repository type, select Backblaze
B2 as the vendor, set its name and location, and configure the repository settings.
5. Click Finish to complete Backup Repository creation.

Integration with other clouds

To integrate on-premises deployment of NAKIVO Backup & Replication with any public or
private cloud:

1. Make sure that the cloud platform supports running virtual machines (instances).
2. Install a Director and Transporter in their production data center.
3. Create a VM in the cloud for Transporter deployment.
4. Install an additional Transporter on a VM running in the cloud.
5. Make sure the Director and Transporter at the data center can connect to the new Transporter.
6. Attach the necessary amount of storage to the cloud Transporter. Format and mount the
storage so that it is accessible by the cloud Transporter as a file system.
7. Create a Backup Repository in the cloud using the cloud Transporter.
8. Create a backup job to back up VMs to the Backup Repository in the cloud.
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Offsite Backup Tips

To back up data (or copy a backup) to an offsite location, a customer should consider one of
the following destinations.

Remote data center: Back up to a server running at an offsite location.

1. Install a Director and Transporter at the primary data center.

2. Install an additional Transporter at the secondary data center.
3. Make sure the Director and Transporter at the primary data center can connect to the
Transporter at the secondary data center.
4. Create a Backup Repository using the Transporter installed at the secondary data center.
5. Create a job to perform backup to the Backup Repository at the secondary data center.

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Backup to Cloud: Send backups or backup copies directly to a server running in the cloud
(AWS/Wasabi).

1. Make sure the cloud supports running virtual servers.

2. Install a Director and Transporter in the production data center.
3. Install an additional Transporter on a virtual machine running in the cloud.
4. Make sure the Director and Transporter at the data center can connect to the cloud Transporter.
5. Create a Backup Repository in the cloud using the cloud Transporter.
6. Create a job to perform backup to the Backup Repository in the cloud.

Removable drive: Back up to a removable disk for storing critical backups offsite.

1. Connect a removable disk to the Transporter.

2. Create a Backup Repository on the removable disk.
3. Create a backup job to back up to this Backup Repository.
4. Repeat steps 1–3 for other removable disks, if any.

To perform backup to removable drives:

1. Connect a removable disk to the Transporter.

2. Attach the corresponding Backup Repository.
3. Run the corresponding backup job.
4. Once the backup is complete, detach the Backup Repository.
5. Disconnect the removable disk. It is ready to be relocated off-site.
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Backup Size Reduction

Backup Deduplication and Compression
NAKIVO Backup & Replication can use compression and block-level deduplication to reduce
backup storage space requirements. While compression reduces the size of each data block,
deduplication ensures that only unique blocks are saved to a Backup Repository. Note that
compression and deduplication can be configured only during Backup Repository creation.

Customers can select one of three compression levels: fast, medium, or best. Fast compression
offers moderate space savings while providing great throughput and low CPU utilization. Medium
compression provides a balance between space savings and load on the CPU. Best compression
offers the most space savings while having low throughput and putting more load on the CPU.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication can automatically deduplicate all backups across an entire
forever-incremental Backup Repository. This means that all data blocks are taken into
account by backup deduplication, even if VMware vSphere VMs, Microsoft Hyper-V VMs,
Nutanix VMs, Amazon EC2 instances, and Windows and Linux physical servers/workstations
are backed up to the same Backup Repository.

VM backup deduplication can reduce storage capacity requirements by as much as 30 times.

For example, a customer has 10 VMs running Windows Server 2016, with each instance of the
OS occupying 10 GB. While the total amount of data is 100 GB, only one copy of OS data (10
GB) will be written to a Backup Repository with data deduplication enabled, which provides
10:1 storage space savings.

More efficient disk space utilization allows storing more recovery points per backup. In
addition, lower storage space requirements save money on direct storage costs (as fewer
disks are needed to store the same amount of information) and on related costs (such as
cooling, electricity, and maintenance).

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Exclude Swap Files and Partitions

Swap files on Windows OS and swap partitions on Linux OS serve as virtual memory and
store temporary runtime data that is not in use by RAM. Swap files and partitions allow
the OS to increase its performance: Once the physical memory is full, the OS can send
less frequently used data to a swap file/partition and use the freed up physical memory to
perform high priority tasks. While this approach is great for OS and application performance,
it has a negative effect on VM backup and replication.

The contents of the swap file change from time to time, so each time a VM backup or VM
replication is run, the swap file/partition is included in the backup or replica. Since the
swap file can automatically grow up to 3 times the size of RAM, this means that gigabytes
of unnecessary data are processed, transferred, and stored on a daily basis. The impact of
swap files and partitions on backup and replication is significant even in small environments.
For example, if a backup for 10 VMs is run with each VM having just 2 GB of swap data, this
is what will be transferred and stored: 10 VMs x 2 GB x 22 working days = 440 GB of useless
data in one month.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication automatically excludes swap files and partitions in VMware
vSphere VMs, Microsoft Hyper-V VMs, and Amazon EC2 instances, which results in faster and
smaller backups and replicas. Note that the application-aware mode instructs applications
and databases running inside VMs to flush their data from memory to disk, which means that
all the important data will be included in VM backups and replicas.

Exclude Unused Blocks

In addition to excluding swap files and partitions, NAKIVO Backup & Replication allows
customers to exclude unused disk blocks during backup or replication. Unused blocks include
the following fragments within the file system:

• Never used volume area

• File area used by deleted files (without hard reference)

Enabling exclusion of unused blocks reduces the size of backups and replicas, ensuring that
only relevant data is copied. This results in less processing power and time required for the
workflow to finish.

This option can be configured on a per-job basis on the Options page of backup and
replication job wizards and is enabled by default. The feature supports processing source
objects running on Windows OS. It is available for the new technology file system (NTFS).

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Data Recovery
Instant File Recovery to Source
With the Instant File Recovery to Source feature, files and folders can be recovered to
their original location, to a local folder, CIFS or NFS share, downloaded to their browser, or
forwarded via email as an attachment.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication supports the following file systems:

- If the Transporter assigned to the Backup Repository is installed on Windows:

• NTFS
• FAT32
• ReFS

- If the Transporter assigned to the Backup Repository is installed on Linux:

• NTFS
• FAT32
• EXT3
• EXT4
• XFS

For the list of supported operating systems, see Supported Platforms.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication can instantly recover files from backups. Files can be recovered
from both Windows-based and Linux-based machines. With the push of a button, the
selected files can be reinstated in their original location or a new custom location on any VM,
Amazon EC2 instance, or physical machine; downloaded to the local machine; or sent via
email. When restoring files to the original location, the file permissions are restored as well.

The Instant File Recovery feature works both via LAN and WAN. Thus, even if local backups
are unavailable, recovery is possible from a backup copy located, for example, in the AWS
cloud a thousand miles away.

The file recovery process is simple and straightforward. First, select a backup and recovery
point from which to recover files. The files and folders available for recovery are displayed right
in the web interface of NAKIVO Backup & Replication. Browse or search for files, select the files
to recover, specify where they should go, and click a button—the files are instantly recovered.

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Learn how to recover files with NAKIVO Backup & Replication here.

Instant VM Recovery (Flash VM Boot)

With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, a full VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V VM can be
recovered from a backup in seconds. Flash VM Boot enables booting a VM directly from a
compressed and deduplicated backup, without recovering the entire VM. The VM is started in
just a few seconds and runs directly from the backup. Flash VM Boot makes it possible to:

• Permanently restore the booted VM;

• Access files and application objects of any application on any OS;
• Test system updates and patches before applying them to production VMs;
• Verify the backup and ensure that OS and applications can run properly;
• Copy a VMDK file to another datastore.

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The Flash VM Boot feature for a VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V VM works as follows:

• Create and run a Flash VM Boot job.

• The Director creates a new VM without virtual disks on the target server.
• The Transporter exposes the VM disks located in the Backup Repository as iSCSI targets.
• The Director attaches the exposed iSCSI targets to the VM.
• The Director creates a snapshot of the VM; changes are written to the snapshot.
• The VM is powered on and keeps running until discarded.

Once booted, the VM can be migrated to the production environment using the hypervisor’s
native live migration feature. This way, the VM can be permanently recovered in no time,
without affecting VM backups.

Note that Flash VM Boot is available for VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V VMs only.

Cross-Platform Flash Boot for Physical Machines

With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, VMware vSphere VMs can be instantly booted from
physical machine backups, without actually recovering the virtual disks. If a critical physical
machine goes down, use Cross-Platform Flash Boot for instant recovery without having to
manually install a new OS and applications on the new machine. The machine recovered this
way can be used as a testing environment and can later be migrated for permanent use.

To create Flash Boot jobs for physical machines:

• Create and run a Flash VM Boot job for physical machines.

• The Director creates a new VM without virtual disks on the target server.
• The Transporter exposes VM disks located in the Backup Repository as iSCSI targets.
• The Director attaches the exposed iSCSI targets to the VM.
• The Director creates a snapshot of the VM; changes are written to the snapshot.
• The VM is powered on and keeps running until discarded.

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Once the machine is running, the customer can migrate it to production for permanent
recovery. Learn more about migrating recovered VMs using Flash Boot here.

Physical-to-Virtual Machine Recovery

To protect mixed physical and virtual IT environments, NAKIVO Backup & Replication offers
the Physical-to-Virtual Machine Recovery feature.

To recover a physical machine as a VMware VM, the following requirements must be met:
• The physical machine must be accessible over the network.
• Administrative credentials to the physical machine must have been provided.

Supported Operating Systems for Physical-to-Virtual Machine Recovery:

• Ubuntu 20.04 Server, Ubuntu 18.04 Server, Ubuntu 16.04 Server (x64)
• Ubuntu v18.04–20.04 (Desktop) LTS (x64)
• RHEL v7.4–8.4 (x64)
• SLES 12 SP3–15 SP2 (x64)
• CentOS v7.0–8.4 (x64)

Supported Recovery Destinations:

• VMware vSphere version 6.7 or later

To recover a physical machine with NAKIVO Backup & Replication:

1. Add the physical machine and VMware vCenter/ESXi host to the Inventory.
2. Start a physical machine backup job that specifies which machines should be backed
up, where the backups should be located, how often the backup should occur, and what
backup options should be used.
3. Recover a physical machine from the backup as a VMware vSphere VM using the
Dashboard or the Repositories page in Settings.

To recover a physical machine as a VMware vSphere VM:

1. Go to Dashboard, click Recover, and select Physical Full Recovery > VM recovery from backup.
2. Navigate to Settings, click Repositories and hover over the repository that holds the
required backup.
3. Select Physical Full Recovery > VM recovery from backup.

The diagram below shows how the physical-to-virtual machine recovery is performed.

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Instant Object Recovery for Microsoft Active Directory

NAKIVO Backup & Replication supports the following versions of Microsoft Active Directory
for object recovery:
• Windows Server 2019
• Windows Server 2016
• Windows Server 2012 R2
• Windows Server 2012
• Windows Server 2008 R2
NAKIVO Backup & Replication allows browsing, searching, and recovering Microsoft Active
Directory objects from backups, without restoring the production machine first. Recovery
can be performed back to the source or can be exported to a local folder or CIFS share. The
Instant Object Recovery for Microsoft Active Directory feature is agentless, works out of the
box, and does not require a special lab.

Object recovery for Microsoft Active Directory is based on the same technology as file
recovery and is executed by the Transporter assigned to the Backup Repository. To perform
Object Recovery for Microsoft Active Directory:

• Start the Object Recovery Wizard for Microsoft Active Directory.

• Select a backup and a recovery point.
• The Transporter exposes the contents of the selected recovery point from the Backup
Repository as an iSCSI target.
• Using a built-in system iSCSI initiator, the Transporter mounts the exposed iSCSI target to
the OS where this Transporter is installed.
• The Transporter finds the Active Directory database automatically. The Transporter opens
the database and reports the contents of the database to the Director.
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• In the wizard, browse the database and select items for recovery.
• Select one of the recovery options (Recover to original location; Export to a specified location).

The recovered items can be imported into a running Active Directory server. Learn more
about this here.

Instant Object Recovery for Microsoft Exchange Server

NAKIVO Backup & Replication supports the following versions of Microsoft Exchange Server
for object recovery:
• Microsoft Exchange 2019
• Microsoft Exchange 2016
• Microsoft Exchange 2013

With Instant Object Recovery for Microsoft Exchange, it is possible to instantly browse,
search, and recover Microsoft Exchange objects (such as emails) from backups, without
having to recover an entire production machine first. Recovery can be performed back to the
source, to a custom location (to a target database or mailbox), or exported to a local folder or
CIFS share. This feature is purely agentless, works right out of the box, and does not require
creating a special lab or running a special backup type.

Object recovery for Microsoft Exchange Server is based on the same technology as the file
recovery and is executed by the Transporter assigned to the Backup Repository. To perform
Object Recovery for Microsoft Exchange:

• Start the Object Recovery Wizard for Microsoft Exchange.

• Select a backup and a recovery point.
• The Transporter exposes the contents of the recovery point as an iSCSI target.
• Using a built-in system iSCSI initiator, the Transporter mounts the exposed iSCSI target to
the OS where this Transporter is installed.
• The Transporter finds the Exchange database automatically. The Transporter opens the
database and reports the contents of the database to the Director.
• In the wizard, browse the database and select items for recovery.
• Select one of the recovery options (Recover to original location; Recover to custom
location; Export to a specified location).

Instant Object Recovery for Microsoft SQL Server

NAKIVO Backup & Replication supports the following versions of Microsoft SQL Server for
object recovery:

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• Microsoft SQL Server 2019

• Microsoft SQL Server 2017
• Microsoft SQL Server 2016
• Microsoft SQL Server 2014
• Microsoft SQL Server 2012
• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2
• Microsoft SQL Server 2008

With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, Microsoft SQL Server objects (databases and tables) can
be instantly recovered from backups. The objects can be restored back to the original location
or to a different SQL server, or exported to a local folder or CIFS share. The process of the
SQL object recovery is simple and straightforward:

1. Start the Object Recovery Wizard for Microsoft SQL Server.

2. Select a backup and a recovery point.
3. The Transporter exposes the contents of the recovery point as an iSCSI target.
4. Using a built-in system iSCSI initiator, the Transporter mounts the exposed iSCSI target to
the OS where this Transporter is installed.
5. The Transporter finds the Microsoft SQL database automatically. The Transporter opens
the database and reports the contents of the database to the Director.
6. In the wizard, browse the database and select items for recovery.
7. Select one of the recovery options (Recover to original location; Recover to custom
location; Export to a specified location).

NAS Recovery
NAKIVO Backup & Replication allows the recovery of the contents of full file shares on NAS
devices or specific items from file share backups to a custom location in a single zip archive.
To start NAS recovery:

1. Start the file share recovery wizard.

2. Select the backup and recovery point that contains the needed data.
3. Browse or search the backup contents to find the needed files/folders.
4. Configure recovery options and launch the recovery.

Item Recovery for Microsoft 365

NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides instant granular recovery of specific Exchange Online,
OneDrive for Business, SharePoint Online, and Teams items.

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The Microsoft 365 items available for recovery include:

• Exchange Online individual mailboxes, folders, attachments, emails, OneNote items, files,
contacts, and calendar events;
• OneDrive for Business individual files and folders;
• SharePoint Online sites, subsites, document libraries, files, lists, and list items;
• Teams channels, posts, files, and tabs.

Items can be recovered to either the original or custom location.

To recover the necessary Microsoft 365 items:

1. Launch the recovery wizard.

2. Select the backup with the needed items.
3. Choose the account to recover the data to.
4. Browse or search for the items to recover.
5. Configure recovery options and launch the recovery.

Universal Object Recovery

With the Universal Object Recovery feature, any object in the infrastructure—whatever
the application or file system—can be recovered in a matter of minutes by mounting the
appropriate backup to a VM or physical server and then recovering the necessary data using
the native application tools.

Application objects can be recovered in a few steps:

1. Open the Universal Object Recovery Wizard and select the appropriate recovery point.
2. Once the disks to be mounted are selected, NAKIVO Backup & Replication attaches those
disks to the specified VM or physical machine.
3. Log into the corresponding VM or physical machine and use native application tools to
recover the data.

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Cross-Platform Recovery
With Cross-Platform Recovery, critical data can be seamlessly recovered across multiple platforms.

Customers can export VM/physical machine data from any backup into a format of their choice in
four steps:
1. Select a backup (VMware vSphere VM, Microsoft Hyper-V VM, or Windows/Linux physical
machine).
2. Choose one or multiple virtual disks to be exported.
3. Specify the target location and export format (VMDK, VHD, or VHDX).
4. Click a button and the data of each selected disk is exported into a separate file.

Once exported, the files can be used for recovery or long-term storage.

Cross-Platform Recovery allows for unrestricted data recovery across different hypervisors,
physical servers, and cloud platforms. Whether a hypervisor or physical server is down or
the customer needs to migrate data from one platform to another, Cross-Platform Recovery
provides the tools for seamless cross-platform data protection and recovery.

Learn more about other feature requirements for Cross-Platform Recovery here.

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Disaster Recovery
Replication
VM replication creates a copy of a VM on a target host and keeps it up to date. The copy of
the VM, called a replica, is a regular VM available on a VMware vSphere or Hyper-V host.
Replicas remain in a powered-off state and do not consume resources, yet they can be
powered on in case of a disaster.

With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, it is possible to create up to 30 recovery points per VM
replica. Each replica recovery point is a regular VM snapshot, so the replica can be returned
to the previous good state even without NAKIVO Backup & Replication.

In an Amazon EC2 environment, replication creates an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) in the
target region (which can be the same region or a different region). The AMI is available in the
AWS management console and can be turned into a running instance within minutes.

Why use replication

Replication can protect business-critical services in a number of events:
• Critical application loss due to a bad OS update, a virus, or an accidental deletion.
• Host/datastore failure as a result of a power loss or hardware malfunction.
• Natural disasters such as an earthquake, flood, tornado, hurricane, or typhoon.
Replication creates copies of VMs (instances) that can be stored locally or offsite, allowing
fornear-instant failover from the original VM or instance to the replica.

Replication technology
For VMware environments, NAKIVO Backup & Replication relies on VM snapshots to
retrieve data and perform replication. For Hyper-V, NAKIVO Backup & Replication relies on
Hyper-V VM checkpoints. Temporary snapshots (for VMware vSphere VMs) or checkpoints
(for Microsoft Hyper-V VMs) are automatically created and removed as needed. The initial

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full replication creates a regular VM that is identical to the source one. On subsequent
replications, the solution identifies changed data in the source VM. All changes made since
the last replication are sent to the target host and merged into the replica. The state of the
replica is saved as a recovery point, which is just a regular VM snapshot or checkpoint.

In an Amazon EC2 environment, NAKIVO Backup & Replication uses native EBS snapshots and
snapshot copy tasks to ensure the data is replicated to a proper region. In the destination
region, an AMI is created as a recovery point. The AMI represents the original EC2 instance as
of the particular moment in time.

RTO and RPO improvement

Replication improves the recovery point objective (RPO), which is the point in time that the VMs or
instances will be reverted to in case of a disaster. Customers can set up replication jobs to run as
regularly as every minute, obtaining near real-time replication and one of the shortest RPOs.

With replication, customers can also improve the recovery time objective (RTO), which is the
time that it takes to restore their virtual infrastructure. Since replicas are regular VMs and AMIs,
recovering from a disaster can be done even without NAKIVO Backup & Replication.

Offsite replication tips

To replicate VMware VMs to an off-site location:

• Install a Director and Transporter at the primary data center.

• Install an additional Transporter at the secondary data center.
• Make sure the Director and Transporter at the primary data center can connect to the
Transporter and VMware infrastructure at the secondary data center.
• Create a replication job to replicate VMs to the secondary data center.

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To replicate Amazon EC2 instances to other regions, simply create a replication job and select
the destination region. Deployment of additional Transporters is not required for this case.

Disaster recovery with replicas

Customers can minimize the risk of data loss and downtime with replication-based disaster
recovery. Using replication, customers can recover their virtual infrastructures with minimal
interruption to business services. Since replication creates a copy of the original VM,
resuming business services is as simple as powering on the replica VM.

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If the AMI or the whole AWS region becomes unavailable, customers just need to launch the
replicated AMI.

In the event of a disaster, the entire virtual infrastructure can be switched over from the primary
site to a disaster recovery site. When the virtual infrastructure at the primary site is restored, the
workloads can be returned back with the failback process. To fail back to the primary site, create
another replication job and replicate the VMs (instances) in the opposite direction.

Replication from Backup

With the Replication from Backup feature, customers can offload the production environment
by replicating VMs directly from backups.

Step 1: Create a backup by creating and running a backup job.

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Step 2: Replicate the VM from backup.

Setting up replication from backup for VMware and Hyper-V environments takes no longer
than setting up a traditional replication job. Once the replication job wizard is launched and
VM backup is selected as the source, NAKIVO Backup & Replication proceeds to read the data
from the repository and inject it in the replica. For more information about replicating VMs
from backup, refer to Replication from Backup.

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Site Recovery
With Site Recovery jobs, NAKIVO Backup & Replication can automate the execution of one or
more actions. An action is a single task included in a Site Recovery job and can be one of the
following types:

• Failover action for VMware/Hyper-V VMs or EC2 instances

• Failback action for VMware/Hyper-V VMs or EC2 instances
• Start/Stop action for VMware/Hyper-V VMs or EC2 instances
• Run/Stop action for jobs
• Run Script action
• Attach/Detach Repository action
• Send Email action
• Wait action
• Check Condition action

Special actions that are used in recovering an IT environment with a Site Recovery job are
failover and failback.

• Failover is the process of switching workloads from a primary site to a disaster recovery site.
• Failback is the process of switching workloads from a VM replica at a disaster recovery site
back to the source VM at the primary site.

A Site Recovery job can be executed in one of the following modes:

• Test mode is designed to verify the Site Recovery job workflow and results. Customers can
execute a Site Recovery job in test mode on demand or by scheduling it. Refer to Running
Site Recovery Job in Test Mode for details.
• Production mode is designed to recover the environment from a disaster. Customers can
execute a Site Recovery job in production mode on demand only. Refer to Running Site
Recovery Job in Production Mode for details.

When the Site Recovery job is run in production mode, failover may be one of two types:

• Planned failover is designed to achieve zero data loss when a disaster happens. NAKIVO
Backup & Replication syncs replica data with the source VM before switching workloads to
the replica.
• Emergency failover is designed to minimize downtime. NAKIVO Backup & Replication
switches workloads from the source VM to the replica immediately.

A Site Recovery job can be run on demand or by scheduling it.

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Integration
Dell EMC DD Boost
The Dell EMC Data Domain (DD) Boost technology allows customers to reduce storage consumption
by up to 17 times and accelerate VM backups. The quantity of business data has drastically
increased in recent years. This results in two problems for modern companies. The first one is the
amount of storage space that backups occupy. The second is the significant load on the production
network created by backup operations, especially if they are run during business hours.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication and Dell EMC DD Boost offer a combined solution for both
of these challenges. By using NAKIVO Backup & Replication along with the source-side
deduplication of Dell EMC DD Boost, customers can perform VM backups 50% faster while
reducing the size of backups by up to 94%. This means that customers can offload their
network and save storage space at the same time.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides advanced integration with the following storage solutions:
• Dell EMC Data Domain 6.1
• Dell EMC Data Domain 6.2

To integrate NAKIVO Backup & Replication with Dell EMC DD Boost, create a Backup
Repository on an EMC Data Domain appliance with DD Boost support. To incorporate DD
Boost features into NAKIVO Backup & Replication, the BoostFS Plugin has to be installed on
the Linux machine on which NAKIVO Backup & Replication is deployed. The plugin allows a
DD Boost storage unit to be configured as a NAKIVO Backup & Replication Backup Repository
via mounting the DD Boost Filesystem on Linux.

Learn more information about the integration of NAKIVO Backup & Replication with EMC DD
Boost here.

NEC HYDRAstor
NAKIVO Backup & Replication also offers advanced integration with NEC HYDRAstor
appliances. A HYDRAstor storage system is integrated with the HYDRAstor software, thus
creating a single storage pool. The software incorporates multiple features of distributed
storage systems, including content-addressable storage, variable block size, inline global data
deduplication, erasure codes, data encryption, Rabin fingerprinting, and load balancing.

HYDRAstor can be scaled out from one node to 165 nodes in a multi-rack grid appliance. Its
bandwidth and capacity can be scaled out separately by using different types of nodes:
• Hybrid nodes add both performance and capacity.
• Storage nodes add capacity.
HYDRAstor supports online expansion with automatic data migration and no downtime. With

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a standard configuration, NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides data resiliency for up to 3
concurrent disk or node failures. Failures are detected automatically and data reconstruction
is also performed automatically. This means that if time between failures is sufficient for
reconstructing data, the system will withstand any number of them. For more information
about NEC HYDRAstor, refer to NEC’s official website.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides advanced integration with the following storage solutions:
• NEC HYDRAstor 5.5.1 and above
• NEC Storage HS Universal Express I/O Module Version 1.8.0 and above

NAKIVO Backup & Replication allows customers to create a Backup Repository on the NEC
HYDRAstor appliance and then create full synthetic backups via Universal Express I/O. Learn
more about integrating NAKIVO Backup & Replication with NEC HYDRAstor here.

HPE StoreOnce Catalyst

NAKIVO Backup & Replication with the HPE StoreOnce Catalyst protocol allows customers to
drastically reduce storage capacity requirements, optimize network bandwidth consumption,
and speed up backups to HPE StoreOnce backup appliances. Integration with HPE StoreOnce
Catalyst allows customers to perform source-side deduplication, meaning that only unique
(or deduplicated) chunks of data are transferred to the Backup Repository.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides a special Backup Repository optimized for
deduplication appliances. To start using an HPE StoreOnce backup appliance with Catalyst
integration, create a Backup Repository on Deduplication Appliance. The supported platforms
include HPE StoreOnce 3.13.1 and later.

HPE 3PAR and Nimble Storage

NAKIVO Backup & Replication lets customers create backups of VMware VMs hosted on HPE
3PAR and Nimble Storage devices directly from storage snapshots instead of regular VM
snapshots to save time and optimize performance. The supported platforms include HPE 3PAR
OS 3.1.2 / HPE Nimble OS 5.02 and above.

The regular snapshot creation process consists of three steps: switching disks on the target VM to
read-only mode, copying data from VM disks, and merging the changes from the delta files into
VM disks. For VMs that process large volumes of data, the delta file can become rather large, so
the entire procedure may require a lot of time and create a heavy load on production storage.
When using the Backup from storage snapshots feature, NAKIVO Backup & Replication creates a
storage snapshot from the target VM, then changes are merged into the VM, then the backup is
created from the storage snapshot. Storage snapshot creation takes only a small amount of time
and reduces snapshot lifetime, especially in the case of multiple VMs on the same volume.

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To enable backup creation from HPE 3PAR or Nimble storage snapshots, create a VMware
vSphere backup job and select the VMs that have disks residing on the storage device. As long
as the customer has an applicable license, backup from storage snapshots should be available
and enabled by default. Learn more about backup from HPE 3PAR or Nimble storage snapshots
here: Backup from HPE 3PAR and HPE Nimble Storage Snapshots

Microsoft Active Directory

Microsoft Active Directory is a leading directory service that allows customers to authenticate and
authorize users and computers in a Windows domain type network. To simplify user management,
NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides integration with Microsoft Active Directory. A customer can
easily map Active Directory groups to NAKIVO Backup & Replication user roles, which allows domain
users to log in to NAKIVO Backup & Replication with their domain credentials. With this feature,
the customer can align NAKIVO Backup & Replication with their company’s security policy and
seamlessly provide Admin and Guest access to NAKIVO Backup & Replication.

Aptare IT Analytics Integration

NAKIVO Backup & Replication can be integrated with APTARE IT Analytics to help generate
machine backup reports or daily backup reports. The integration is done via an APTARE data
collector that sends storage component information to the system’s platform. The steps for
integrating NAKIVO Backup & Replication with APTARE IT Analytics are described here.

Backup as a Service (BaaS)

Multi-Tenancy
With multi-tenancy, it is possible to create and manage up to 1,000 isolated tenants within a
single copy of NAKIVO Backup & Replication. Tenants can represent business units, branch
offices, departments, customers, or any other entities.

In the multi-tenant mode, each tenant can access its own environment through the Self-
Service Portal and perform all data protection and recovery tasks. At the same time, tenants
are isolated from each other and cannot access the environment and jobs of other tenants.
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With multi-tenancy, a managed service provider (MSP) can:

• Deliver backup as a service, replication as a service, and disaster recovery as a service for
VMware vSphere VMs, Microsoft Hyper-V VMs, Nutanix AHV VMs, Amazon EC2 instances,
and Windows and Linux servers/workstations more easily and cost-effectively.
• Allocate hosts, clusters, VMs, Backup Repositories, and Transporters to tenants.
• Reduce complexity by managing multiple tenants from a single pane of glass.
• Offload data protection and recovery tasks to tenants.
• Reduce footprint by managing tenants in a single instance of the product.

Self-Service
With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, an MSP can offload data protection and recovery tasks
to their IT service consumers. When installed in the multi-tenant mode, NAKIVO Backup &
Replication allows customers to create multiple isolated tenants in a single deployment of the
software solution. The tenants can represent business units, departments, branch offices, or
customers.

Tenants can log in to the Self-Service Portal with their own credentials. An MSP can customize
the look and feel of the Self-Service Portal.

In the portal, each tenant has access only to their own jobs and IT environment, and it does
not have access to the data of other tenants. If provided with sufficient permissions by the
Master Admin, a tenant can create and run VM backup, backup copy, and VM replication jobs
and perform full VM and granular recovery. Self-service enables a customer to save time and
improve manageability and service delivery in large and distributed IT environments.

Direct Connect
With the Direct Connect feature in NAKIVO Backup & Replication, MSPs can access their
clients’ remote resources (such as a repository or IT infrastructure) without the need for a
VPN connection. The feature allows MSPs to establish a secure connection to clients’ remote
resources via a single port, allowing them to overcome any networking issues and the
cumbersome process of setting up a VPN connection.

VMware Cloud Director

When using VMware Cloud Director as a cloud service delivery platform, MSPs can ensure
that client workloads are protected and recoverable if a data loss incident occurs. With
NAKIVO Backup & Replication, customers can easily back up VMware Cloud Director objects,
such as vApps, individual VMs, and vApp metadata to local storage, NAS, or the cloud
(Amazon S3, Wasabi, Backblaze B2, Azure Blob, etc.). When needed, objects can be restored
directly to the Cloud Director hierarchy.

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Branding
Whether a customer plans to use NAKIVO Backup & Replication internally or provide BaaS
or disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) to clients, they may want to align the feel of the
interface with their company’s brand.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides a simple way to customize the interface so that it
looks like an integral part of a company. Customize:

• Product: Product title and product logo.

• Company information: Company name and website URL.
• Contact information: Email, support email, and contact phone.
• Look and feel: Color and opacity of header and footer, product background, and
bookmark icon.

For information on branding configuration, refer to Branding Configuration.

License Delegation
In multi-tenant mode, NAKIVO Backup & Replication allows customers to create multiple
isolated tenants in a single deployment of the software solution. Tenants can represent branch
offices or departments in enterprise environments or clients in Cloud Provider environments.

Since tenants are isolated and need to have a limit as to how many licenses each of them can
use, NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides the License Delegation feature. In multi-tenant
mode, a Master Admin (tenant manager) can install one multi-socket license in the product
and then assign (delegate) a specific number of licenses to each tenant. For example, the
Master Admin can install a 20-socket license in the multi-tenant mode of NAKIVO Backup &
Replication, and assign 3 licenses to Tenant A, 2 licenses to Tenant B, and 4 licenses to Tenant
C, and leave 11 licenses unused.

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At any moment, the Master Admin can redistribute licenses: revoke any number of licenses from
any tenant, which returns them to the Master License Pool, or add licenses to another tenant.

The License Delegation feature makes license management simple and manageable in large and
distributed environments.

Module 3 Recap
In this module, you have learned that:

• NAKIVO Backup & Replication offers a complete suite of backup, replication, and recovery
features to protect virtual, physical, cloud, and SaaS environments. VMware vSphere
VMs, Microsoft Hyper-V VMs, Nutanix AHV VMs, Amazon EC2 instances, physical servers,
NAS file shares, Microsoft 365 data, and Oracle databases can be protected with a single
comprehensive solution.
• NAKIVO Backup & Replication offers multiple features, such as deduplication and
compression, to optimize the size of stored backups and reduce data protection costs.
• NAKIVO Backup & Replication can automatically send data backups and their copies offsite,
to tape, or Amazon S3/Wasabi/Azure Blob/Backblaze B2 clouds, providing on-demand
offsite backup destinations.
• The solution supports many recovery options, including file recovery to source or a custom
location, full recovery, Flash VM Boot, object recovery for Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft
SQL Server and Active Directory, universal object recovery, site recovery, cross-platform
recovery, and so on. NAKIVO Backup & Replication can instantly recover VMs, files, and
application objects directly from backups, allowing customers to maintain operational
performance even in the face of a disaster.

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Module 4: Technical Benefits

Module 4 Outline
• Flexibility
• Reliability
• Performance
• Automation
• Usability

Flexibility
Multiple Deployment Options
NAKIVO Backup & Replication can be installed on multiple platforms, providing extreme
deployment flexibility. Depending on business needs, customers can choose one of the
following deployment options:

• As a VMware vSphere or Nutanix AHV Virtual Appliance

• Install on Windows
• Install on Linux
• As an Amazon Machine Image
• Install directly on NAS devices (QNAP, Synology, ASUSTOR, NETGEAR, and Western Digital)

Small Footprint
NAKIVO Backup & Replication requires just 2 CPUs and 4 GB RAM for full deployment (1 GB of
RAM for NAS).

Scalability
NAKIVO Backup & Replication can be scaled out by installing additional Transporters and
creating additional Backup Repositories. The solution can be quickly scaled to protect
thousands of VMs or instances in a single site or across hundreds of remote sites.

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Reliability
Application and Database Support
NAKIVO Backup & Replication supports Microsoft Exchange, Active Directory, Microsoft
SQL Server, Oracle Database, and other applications running inside machines that are
backed up or replicated.

Using VMware’s Guest OS Quiescing, the solution ensures that application data is
always consistent. VMware’s Guest OS Quiescing technology uses VMware Tools for
instructing applications and databases in a VM to flush data on disk before a snapshot
is made. During snapshot creation, applications keep all transactions in memory so that
they continue functioning properly. Up-to-date VMware Tools are required to enable
application-aware mode.

In Hyper-V environments, NAKIVO Backup & Replication uses the Volume Shadow Copy
Service. Hyper-V Server 2016 has integrated this service with VM checkpoints, so a server
just needs to be properly configured. On Hyper-V 2012 servers, which don’t have such
implementation, NAKIVO Backup & Replication injects a runtime Volume Shadow Copy
Service (VSS) driver into a VM to be backed up or replicated to ensure consistency of
application data.

In Nutanix AHV environments, NAKIVO Backup & Replication uses Nutanix Guest Tools (NGT).
For Windows, NGT enables application-consistent snapshots of AHV or ESXi Windows VMs; for
Linux, it supports application-consistent snapshots by running specific scripts.

In Amazon EC2 environments, NAKIVO Backup & Replication uses a special VSS driver to take
application-consistent snapshots of Windows-based instances. Both Windows-based and
Linux-based instances can be processed using custom pre-freeze and post-thaw scripts.

Application-aware backup for Windows is done via VSS Driver integration. NAKIVO Backup &
Replication requests the VSS Driver to create a quiesced snapshot. VSS Driver uses VSS inside a
Windows physical machine to freeze I/O requests of applications inside the operating system.

Application-aware backup for Linux can be performed via custom scripts. Put the custom
scripts called pre-freeze-script and post-thaw-script into the /usr/sbin directory and
give them execute permission. The pre-freeze-script and post-thaw-script require root
permission to be executed.

When the app-aware mode is enabled for a physical machine backup job, NAKIVO Backup
& Replication triggers guest OS quiescing to ensure that application data is consistent. This
requires credentials to source physical machines and that VSS/logical volume management
(LVM) be properly configured.

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Here is how a temporary snapshot is taken with Application-Aware mode disabled (for VMware):

Here is how a temporary snapshot is taken with Application-Aware mode enabled (for VMware):

Encryption in Flight and at Rest

Backup encryption uses a mathematical algorithm that transforms source information into
a non-readable cipher text. The goal of backup encryption is to make data unintelligible to
unauthorized readers and impossible to decipher when attacked.

VM backups that are sent over the internet should be encrypted before the first bit leaves a
customer’s organization and travels over WAN (backup encryption in flight). If the destination
is not secure, the customer’s data should also remain encrypted (backup encryption at rest).

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NAKIVO Backup & Replication uses Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) 256 encryption for
protecting VM backups. AES 256 is the de facto worldwide encryption standard that secures
online information and transactions by financial institutions, banks, and e-commerce sites.

Instant Verification
VM backups and replicas can be corrupted or be not bootable even if the data protection
software performed properly. The worst time to find out that a backup is bad is when the
production VM is down. If a customer doesn’t have backup copies or VM replicas at an offsite
location, they are left without any viable means of quickly restoring business processes.

Instant verification is the process of checking the integrity of a backup or replica by booting
a VM from a backup or starting a replica and interacting with it. With the Instant Verification
feature, customers have proof that the VM backups or replicas are usable and can rest
assured that the VMs can be recovered in case of an outage.

There are two backup and replica verification methods:

• Boot Verification: The solution performs verification upon job completion by checking the
availability of VMware Tools or Hyper-V Integration Services.

For backups: Once the VM backup job is complete, NAKIVO Backup & Replication test-recovers
the VM with Flash VM Boot, disables networking, and listens to the OS heartbeat to verify that
the guest OS is up and running.

For replicas: Once NAKIVO Backup & Replication completes a VM replication job, the software
powers on the VM replica (with networking disabled) and verifies that the guest OS has
successfully booted by checking whether the required hypervisor tools are running.

The results of the verification procedure can be delivered directly to the NAKIVO Backup &
Replication interface or via email reports.

• Screenshot Verification: The solution performs verification upon job completion by taking
a screenshot of the booted OS.

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For backups: After a VM backup job has completed data transfer, the solution recovers the
VM with Flash VM Boot, disables networking in the VM, takes a screenshot of the guest OS,
and discards the test-recovered VM.

For replicas: After the replication job is completed, NAKIVO Backup & Replication disables
networking in the replica, powers on the replica, takes a screenshot of the OS, powers off the
replica, and reverts it to the latest recovery point. The screenshot is sent via email.

Customers can view the results of the verification procedure in the job dashboard or choose
to receive an email report.

Microsoft Exchange Log Truncation

Microsoft Exchange is the industry’s leading platform for email, calendaring, and messaging
services. To protect data from undesired deletion or modification, each change that is made
to a Microsoft Exchange server database is recorded in transaction logs. These logs can be
replayed to recover data that was removed or changed in the database. While this approach
improves data protection, it has a downside. Since the Microsoft Exchange database is
constantly changing (as data is written and removed in the database), transaction logs grow
over time. If they are not periodically removed, they eventually fill up the disk and may cause
the entire server to crash.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication can create consistent backups of VMware and Hyper-V VMs and
remove transaction log files of Microsoft Exchange 2019, 2016, 2013, 2010, and 2007 servers.
After creating a successful backup, NAKIVO Backup & Replication connects to a customer’s
Microsoft Exchange server, identifies which transaction log files have already been written to
the database, and removes (truncates) those log files.

As a result, NAKIVO Backup & Replication creates regular, application-consistent backups of a

customer’s Microsoft Exchange server and also removes the transaction log files so they don’t
consume all the free disk space on the server.

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Microsoft SQL Server Log Truncation

Any Microsoft SQL server tracks all database transactions (modifications) completed by the
server and records them to the transaction logs. Transaction log files (identified with the .ldf
extension) are very important as they are used to ensure database integrity and facilitate data
restoration by replaying the changes. However, these files grow over time and can eventually fill
all the free space. This may result in a Microsoft SQL Server crash or loss of valuable data. This
is where Transaction Log Truncation can help.

On the one hand, transaction logs should be kept so Microsoft SQL Server data remains
recoverable in the case of any data deletion, undesired modification, or corruption. On the
other hand, there may be a need to remove the transaction logs to save space, but without any
transaction records it is impossible to successfully recover should an unforeseen event occur.

The best practice is first to back up the whole VMware or Hyper-V VM running Microsoft SQL
Server and all the log files stored therein, and then delete (truncate) those files on the source
VM, freeing up storage space.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication supports transaction log truncation for the following versions of
Microsoft SQL Server: 2008, 2008 R2, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2017, and 2019. The solution follows
the best practice of performing the log truncation process while ensuring ease of use and
simplicity. NAKIVO Backup & Replication can automatically truncate transaction log files after
successful VM backup and replication. All a customer needs to do is just set it and forget it.

To free up VM storage space, NAKIVO Backup & Replication performs the following operations:
• Backs up/replicates the entire VMware or Hyper-V VM running Microsoft SQL Server.
• After completing a successful backup/replication, identifies Microsoft SQL Server
transaction log files that were already committed to the database.
• Truncates (deletes) the committed transaction log files on the source VM, thus freeing up
storage space.

As a result, the customer gets a VM backup/replica with all the transaction log files. Even
though the backed up log files can be quite large, NAKIVO Backup & Replication easily
reduces the size of the VM backup by using backup deduplication and compression features.
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In turn, the original VM is left logs-free and can be recovered at the particular recovery point
using the aforementioned VM backup/replica if something goes wrong.

Self-Backup
The Self-Backup feature provides automated protection of everything a customer configured
in NAKIVO Backup & Replication. NAKIVO Backup & Replication automatically backs up the
entire configuration, including all jobs, inventory, information about connected Transporters,
repositories, and so on.

The Self-Backup feature is enabled by default and NAKIVO Backup & Replication sends daily
self-backups to the first five Backup Repositories available in the solution. Each self-backup
is kept for five days by default. Customers can fine-tune the backup targets, schedule, and
retention policy, if needed.

External Product Database Support

Customers can use an external product database instead of the built-in database in NAKIVO
Backup & Replication. By default, the solution uses an internal H2 database for all product
activities. The H2 database is lightweight, which may cause major workflow disruption and delays
in large enterprise-scale environments under certain circumstances:KIVO Backup & Replication.
• Customers might experience some database issues while moving the infrastructure to
another site;
• Exporting/importing the Director configuration can overload built-in database resources;
• Certain features require more resources than available to the built-in database.

To prevent possible performance issues and make the product more reliable, customers can
migrate existing product data to a more powerful external PostgreSQL database. NAKIVO
Backup & Replication supports PostgreSQL v10-v14. The solution can also run a performance
capability check of the internal database. In case the internal database capacity does not
meet the requirements of the current workload, a recommendation to switch to the external
database will be displayed.
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Users and Roles

Accessing NAKIVO Backup & Replication is possible either with a user account created in the
solution or with an account added to the solution from Active Directory. Each user in the product
is assigned a role and granted a unique set of permissions (role-based access control or RBAC).

To manage users and roles:

• Log in to NAKIVO Backup & Replication.
• Click Settings (cog icon) in the left pane of the interface.
• Go to the General tab and click Users and Roles.

With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, customers can configure Active Directory integration at any
time. They can also add, edit, configure, disable, delete local users, or assign a role to them.

The following built-in local users are available in NAKIVO Backup & Replication:
• admin: This user has the Administrator role assigned. The customer cannot delete it,
disable it, or assign another role.
• guest: This user has the View Only role assigned, with configurable file and object recovery
permissions. By default, the account is disabled.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication also allows customers to add, edit, clone, or delete the roles
assigned to local or Active Directory users.

Additionally, a user role with full access to the user management permission is assigned to a
user profile, allowing the customer to manage users and their roles. Note that a user cannot
edit or delete the user role that is assigned to their user profile.

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Performance
LAN-Free Data Transfer
NAKIVO Backup & Replication automatically uses a LAN-free data transfer mode for VMware
vSphere backup and replication. The LAN-free data transfer mode boosts VM backup and
replication speed and reduces the load on a customer’s network.

On the VMware platform, this is achieved with the HotAdd and Direct SAN access features.
• Direct SAN Access for VMware
• HotAdd for VMware

Deduplication Appliance Support

Deduplication appliances are solutions that implement specialized data reduction techniques to
eliminate duplicate copies of repeated data.

Deduplication appliances are leveraged across a range of data protection solutions, regardless
of whether NAS, disk, and/or tape is used. The biggest advantage of deduplication appliances is
their ability to reduce datastore space used, sometimes by ratios of 20:1 or more.

• NAKIVO Optimization for Deduplication Appliances

• Deduplication Appliance Configuration Details

Optimization for deduplication appliances

NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides a special type of Backup Repository optimized for high
performance with deduplication appliances. With this type of Backup Repository, NAKIVO
Backup & Replication supports virtually any type of deduplication appliance as a primary or
secondary backup destination.

The architecture of this type of Backup Repository is based on writing data sequentially
through a restricted number of data streams and on storing backup blocks in dedicated data
files. Data blocks are stored in incremental backup files and full backup files.

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Deduplication appliance configuration details

When a Backup Repository is created in a deduplication appliance, NAKIVO’s built-in data
deduplication functionality is disabled. Additionally, the incremental-with-full-backups option
is enabled by default. This configuration ensures that no extra resources are spent for double
deduplication and reclaiming repository space is not required.

Advanced Bandwidth Throttling

NAKIVO Backup & Replication was designed to transfer data at the maximum available speed
to complete VM backup, replication, and recovery jobs as quickly as possible. However, if a
customer runs data protection jobs during business hours, their LAN and WAN risk being
overloaded. This can affect the application performance and degrade user experience (email
messages taking too long to be sent, excessive load times for websites, and so on). NAKIVO
Backup & Replication addresses this issue with the Advanced Bandwidth Throttling feature.

With Advanced Bandwidth Throttling, customers can set limits for their data protection jobs
and make sure they don’t take more bandwidth than they can afford to allocate.

Advanced Bandwidth Throttling allows customers to set global rules that limit the data
transfer speeds of their backup processes. The rules can apply to different jobs and on
different schedules. For instance, a customer can create a global rule preventing backup
jobs from consuming more than 50 MB/s during business hours but leave the bandwidth
unrestricted for Sunday backups. A customer can also create bandwidth throttling rules on a
per-job basis to have more granular control over the whole process. Individual limits override
global rules, sparing the customer the need to adjust the global rule for every job.
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The Advanced Bandwidth Throttling feature of NAKIVO Backup & Replication offers effective
optimization of backup operations and control over network traffic. With global and individual limits
on data transfer speeds, the feature can help customers ensure that the performance of business
applications is never affected by backup workloads, even if there’s little bandwidth to spare.

With bandwidth rules, LAN/WAN bandwidth usage by NAKIVO Backup & Replication jobs may
be restricted to a specific amount.

Network Acceleration
Whether a customer runs backup and replication jobs during business hours or sends VM backups
and replicas offsite over the internet, saving network bandwidth is of the essence. NAKIVO Backup
& Replication provides the Network Acceleration feature to speed up backup and replication jobs,
shorten backup windows, and reduce network load at the same time. With network acceleration
enabled, one can increase backup, replication, and recovery speed by 2 times in WAN and busy LAN.

To enable Network Acceleration, a customer just needs to install another Transporter instance
locally or offsite and then enable Network Acceleration in their job. When the job is executed,
the source Transporter reads the data, compresses and optimizes it, and then sends the data
to the target Transporter. By using Network Acceleration, customers can reduce the amount of
data that is transferred over the network, which also means that jobs complete faster.

Network Acceleration for Backup

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Network Acceleration for Replication

Full Synthetic Data Storage

With forever-incremental Backup Repositories, NAKIVO Backup & Replication can use the
full synthetic mode to store backups: All unique data blocks are stored in a single pool, while
recovery points serve as references to the data blocks that are required to reconstruct a
machine at a particular point in time.

With this feature, NAKIVO Backup & Replication enhances backup performance, reduces
storage space requirements, saves time and money, and improves recovery point objectives
(RPOs) and recovery time objectives (RTOs).

Native Change Tracking

NAKIVO Backup & Replication uses platform-native change tracking technologies (VMware
CBT, Hyper-V RCT, Nutanix AHV CRT, Microsoft’s delta query) to instantly identify changed
data and only send the increments to the Backup Repository. Refer to respective sections
under Data Backup in Module 3.

Automation
Job Chaining
Job Chaining allows customers to link jobs to run one after the other. For example, a
customer can set up a VM backup job to save backups locally and then start a Backup Copy
job, which copies the newly created backups to the AWS cloud.

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Customers can link any type of jobs together—backup, backup copy, replication, and
recovery—and add any number of jobs to the chain. For instance, they can set up a series
of backup jobs that trigger one another in the order of priority, or set up a series of Backup
Copy jobs, which first send weekly backups to a disaster recovery repository and then send
monthly backups to AWS cloud for archival.

Pre- and Post-Job Scripts

NAKIVO Backup & Replication makes it possible to run a script before a job begins (a pre-job
script) and after the job has been completed (a post-job script).

By running the pre- and post-job scripts, customers can do just about anything: start custom
pre-freeze and post-thaw scripts on Linux systems to create application-aware VM backups
and replicas; wake servers; establish connections; mount volumes; start and stop services;
send commands to third-party reporting, monitoring, and automation tools; and so on.

HTTP APIs
NAKIVO Backup & Replication can be integrated with monitoring, automation, and
orchestration solutions via HTTP API. This way, the API can be used to manage all the data
protection activities in the NAKIVO Backup & Replication interface while saving time and
money. The API comes as part of an Integration Kit, which includes API documentation and
code examples, making the integration fast and simple.

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By using the API, customers can:

• Simplify backup administration by automating the data protection process from VM
provisioning to VM decommissioning.
• Improve backup performance by monitoring the health status of the product components
and promptly identifying existing issues.
• Address potential risks and threats (e.g. failed jobs, out-of-space errors, etc.) by monitoring
Backup Repositories.
• Save storage space by automating backup decommissioning.
• Improve compliance by automating data protection reporting.
• Use orchestration and automation tools to optimize VM backup and replication jobs
without disrupting the production environment.
• Instantly resume business operations by automating VM recovery.

Job Grouping
With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, customers can arrange jobs in groups (folders) that
represent applications, services, locations, or any other logical structures. They can run bulk
actions on all jobs in a group with a single click.

Usability
Easy Installation
NAKIVO Backup & Replication can be installed and configured in less than 5 minutes. All
required components are built in and the solution’s features work right out of the box.

Container Protection
VMs can be organized into containers, such as resource pools, clusters, and folders. This
structure allows customers to easily add resources upon request and unload them when they
are not necessary. NAKIVO Backup & Replication allows customers to add an entire container
to a backup or replication job and automatically recognizes if any changes have occurred.
Thus, all important VMs are always protected.

If some of the VMs inside a container don’t need to be backed up or replicated, a customer
can exclude them from a backup or replication job. The container is still protected without
the excluded VMs. This saves space in a Backup Repository and increases the speed of
backup or replication jobs.

For example, a customer sets up a backup job for a cluster to run daily but this cluster
contains a couple of relatively huge VMs that don’t require such frequent backup. They can
edit the job by excluding those VMs.
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Day 1

Day 2

Policy-Based Data Protection

With Policy-Based Data Protection, customers don’t have to chase new VMs, instances, physical
servers/workstations, or changes in their infrastructure. The feature is designed to reduce
complexity and add more flexibility to data protection processes such as backup, replication, or
backup copy. Customers can set policy rules based on the machine’s name, tag, size, location,
configuration, power state, or any combination of these parameters. Whenever the status
of a machine changes, the policy recognizes this change and excludes or adds the machine
to jobs accordingly. For instance, a customer can choose to back up all VMware VMs tagged
“Accounting” that exceed 100 GB in size and that have more than 2 GB of allocated RAM. Once a
policy is created, all matching machines are protected or excluded automatically.

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Web UI
NAKIVO Backup & Replication offers a simple and intuitive web interface, facilitating data
protection management from anywhere. All information is summarized in dashboards. The jobs
can be managed in bulk, making it possible to start and stop multiple jobs with a single click.

Calendar Dashboard
Backing up VMs is a resource-intensive process, placing an extra load on the infrastructure,
be it VMware, Hyper-V, or EC2. This is particularly noticeable when it comes to large
environments with thousands of VMs. Too many backup jobs running concurrently on the
same host or on the same network may affect the performance of the virtual environment
and slow down VMs. To reduce the load on resources, backup jobs should be carefully
scheduled and structured to shorten backup windows as much as possible.

Scheduling data protection jobs may be tricky in large virtual environments where multiple
jobs need to be fitted into a backup window and possible overlaps avoided. To resolve this
issue, NAKIVO Backup & Replication features the Calendar dashboard, which is designed to
greatly improve job scheduling.

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The Calendar dashboard displays all the customer’s jobs in a calendar view, the time it took
jobs to run in the past, and the estimated duration for future jobs. Here, the customer can get
a bird’s-eye view of all their jobs and can easily find open time slots for new jobs, which can
be created right in the Calendar dashboard. The customer can also view past jobs and drill
down through their details. The Calendar dashboard has an intuitive interface and navigation,
similar to those of the most popular calendar applications.

Monitoring
The Monitoring dashboard displays the CPU, RAM, and disk usage of customers’ VMware
vSphere hosts, VMs, and datastores in a single view. Both real-time and historical data are
available in charts to improve readability. The easy access to monitoring from the backup
management solution streamlines the administration of customers’ virtual infrastructure.

Global Search
NAKIVO Backup & Replication includes a powerful Global Search feature, which can help a
customer quickly find any item needed by simply entering its name (or part of the name)
into the search box. The customer can refine the search results by using filters (for example,
choosing to view only backups). What’s more, the customer can select from among the
items found and instantly perform mass actions on them, such as creating a new job for
unprotected VMs or adding them to an existing job. This simplifies the management of the
backup infrastructure.

With the Global Search feature, customers can:

• Search: Instantly search for VMs, backups, replicas, jobs, groups, Backup Repositories, and
Transporters.
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• Filter: Choose to view a subset of results, for example, unprotected VMs only.
• Get information: View item details, such as size, host, datastores, networks, and
protection status.
• Act: Once a customer has found what they are looking for, they can take an action: add
multiple unprotected VMs to a job, start a recovery, run a job, and so on.

The Global Search feature in NAKIVO Backup & Replication is an easy-to-use tool that helps
manage large backup infrastructures and save time.

Overview Dashboard

NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides the Overview dashboard for monitoring the state
and efficiency of data protection activities. The dashboard uses widgets that provide real-
time information about active and scheduled jobs, key solution components, and any related
issues. The Overview dashboard enables users to detect and resolve issues in a timely
manner, manage available resources, and maintain optimal performance.

The Overview dashboard includes a summary bar and the following widgets:

• Agenda
• Speed
• Job statistics
• Transporter tasks
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• Backups size
• Jobs
• Repositories
• Transporters
• Events

Live Chat with Tech Support

Customers can contact a NAKIVO representative via chat in the NAKIVO Backup & Replication
interface. Through this live chat, they can also send files, send feedback, and send email
transcripts.

Auto-Update
If NAKIVO Backup & Replication is installed on Windows or Linux, software updates are
automatically made available for download and installation.

Once the update becomes available, the Update available button appears in the interface
header. Customers can choose to either download and update the software or download the
update and run it later.

Product Update Prerequisites

• At least 1 GB of free space must be available on the machine where the solution is
installed.
• A customer’s Maintenance & Support period should be active. This can be checked on the
Licensing page.

On the Update available box, three options are available: Download & update, Download,
and Forget. For further information, see Download & Update Option and Download Option.

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Technical Professional Training

Module 4 Recap
In this module, you have learned that:

• NAKIVO Backup & Replication is a flexible solution that can be installed and run almost
anywhere, allowing customers to protect virtual, physical, cloud, and SaaS environments
from a single pane of glass.
• NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides a rich set of performance-boosting features that
can significantly increase backup, replication, and recovery speed while reducing network
congestion.
• NAKIVO Backup & Replication offers various usability features such as a Calendar
dashboard, Global Search, and others that are designed to improve customer experience
and reduce management overhead.
• NAKIVO Backup & Replication has extensive integration and automation capabilities,
including data protection policy rules, pre- and post-job scripts, HTTP API, which allow
customers to optimize data protection routine activities and save data protection costs.

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Technical Professional Training

Summary
After completing this training, you should now:

• understand the solution’s architecture;

• be able to deploy the solution;
• know how to use the solution’s features;
• understand the solution’s advantages.

Final Steps
To complete certification, you need to take the NAKIVO Technical Professional Certification
Test available on the NAKIVO Partner Portal.

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