Disaster Recovery Specification
Infrascale Disaster Recovery allows you:
- to automatically back up data from computers and servers;
- to restore the required versions of the backup data;
- to retain backups for unlimited time; and
- to boot any DR image on the primary or on the secondary CFA.
CFA specifications
Current CFA models
| MODEL | 550 | 960 | 965 | 1260 | 1265 | 1550 | 2750 | 4550 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Usable storage | 1 TB | 2 TB / 4 TB / 6 TB | 6 TB | 2 TB / 4 TB / 6 TB | 6 TB | 8 TB / 12 TB / 18 TB | 32 TB / 40 TB / 60 TB | 84 TB / 126 TB |
| ARCHITECTURE | ||||||||
| CPU | Intel Celeron N3160 @ 2.24 GHz, 4 cores | Intel Core i3 @ 3.6 GHz, 4 cores | Intel Core i5 @ 2.8 GHz, 6 cores | Intel Core i3 @ 3.6 GHz, 4 cores | Intel Core i5 @ 2.8 GHz, 6 cores | Intel Xeon E5-1620 v4 @ 3.5 GHz, 4 cores | Intel Xeon E5-1650 v4 @ 3.6 GHz, 6 cores | Intel Xeon E5-1660 v4 @ 3.2 GHz, 8 cores |
| RAM | 8 GB, DDR3 | 16 GB, 2666 MHz, DDR4 | 32 GB, 2666 MHz, DDR4 | 16 GB, 2666 MHz, DDR4 | 32 GB, 2666 MHz, DDR4 | 64 GB, 2133 MHz, ECC, DDR4 | 128 GB, 2133 MHz, ECC, DDR4 | 256 GB, 2133 MHz, ECC, DDR4 |
| SSD | N/A | 256 GB | 256 GB | 256 GB | 256 GB | 240 GB | 480 GB | 960 GB |
| HDD | 1 TB @ 7200 rpm | 2 TB / 4 TB / 6 TB @ 7200 rpm | 6 TB @ 7200 rpm | 2 TB / 4 TB / 6TB @ 7200 rpm | 6 TB @ 7200 rpm | 4 TB / 6 TB @ 7200 rpm | 4 TB / 6 TB @ 7200 rpm | 4 TB / 6 TB @ 7200 rpm |
| Hot-swappable HDD bays | N/A | 2 HDDs | 2 HDDs | 2 HDDs | 2 HDDs | 4 HDDs | 12 HDDs | 24 HDDs |
| RAID level | N/A | RAID 1 | RAID 1 | RAID 1 | RAID 1 | RAID 5 | RAID 6 | RAID 6 |
| Ethernet | 2 $\times$ 1 GbE | 2 $\times$ 1 GbE, IPMI | 2 $\times$ 1 GbE, IPMI | 2 $\times$ 1 GbE, IPMI | 2 $\times$ 1 GbE, IPMI | 2 $\times$ 10 GbE, IPMI | 2 $\times$ 10 GbE, IPMI | 2 $\times$ 10 GbE, IPMI |
| PHYSICAL SPECS | ||||||||
| Form factor | Mini-PC | Desktop NAS | Desktop NAS | 1U | 1U | 1U | 2U | 4U |
| Width $\times$ Depth $\times$ Height (in.) | 5 $\times$ 5 $\times$ 2.2 | 10 $\times$ 5.5 $\times$ 7.1 | 10 $\times$ 5.5 $\times$ 7.1 | 16.8 $\times$ 22.6 $\times$ 1.7 | 16.8 $\times$ 22.6 $\times$ 1.7 | 17.2 $\times$ 19.85 $\times$ 1.7 | 17.2 $\times$ 25.5 $\times$ 3.5 | 17.2 $\times$ 26 $\times$ 7 |
| Weight (lb.) | 2 | 7 | 7 | 27 | 27 | 42 (without HDDs) | 56 (without HDDs) | 79 (without HDDs) |
| POWER | ||||||||
| Power supply unit | 1 $\times$ 40 W | 1 $\times$ 250 W | 1 $\times$ 250 W | 1 $\times$ 350 W | 1 $\times$ 350 W | 1 $\times$ 350 W | 2 $\times$ 480 W | 2 $\times$ 600 W (1000 W @ 100–140 V, 50–60 Hz; 1280 W @ 180–240 V, 50–60 Hz) |
| Voltage | 100–240 V, 50–60 Hz | 100–240 V, 50–60 Hz | 100–240 V, 50–60 Hz | 100–240 V, 50–60 Hz | 100–240 V, 50–60 Hz | 100–240 V, 50–60 Hz | 100–240 V, 50–60 Hz | 100–240 V, 50–60 Hz |
| OPTIONS | ||||||||
| CPU upgrade | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | Up to 18 cores @ 2.1 GHz | Up to 18 cores @ 2.1 GHz | Up to 18 cores @ 2.1 GHz |
| RAM upgrade | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | Up to 256 GB | Up to 256 GB | N/A |
Legacy CFA models
| MODEL | 950 | 955 | 1200 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Usable storage | 4 TB / 6 TB | 6 TB | 4 TB |
| ARCHITECTURE | |||
| CPU | Intel Core i3 @ 3.7 GHz, 2 cores | Intel Core i5 @ 3.6 GHz, 4 cores | Intel Core i5 @ 3.5 GHz, 2 cores |
| RAM | 16 GB, 2133 MHz, DDR4 | 32 GB, 2133 MHz, DDR4 | 16 GB, 1600 MHz, DDR3 |
| SSD | 128 GB | 128 GB | 120 GB |
| HDD | 4 TB @ 5900 rpm / 6 TB @ 7200 rpm | 6 TB @ 7200 rpm | 4 TB @ 7200 rpm |
| Hot-swappable HDD bays | 2 HDDs | 2 HDDs | 1 HDD (not swappable) |
| RAID level | RAID 1 | RAID 1 | N/A |
| Ethernet | 2 $\times$ 1 GbE | 2 $\times$ 1 GbE | 2 $\times$ 1 GbE, IPMI |
| PHYSICAL SPECS | |||
| Form factor | Desktop NAS | Desktop NAS | Desktop NAS |
| Width $\times$ Depth $\times$ Height (in.) | 10 $\times$ 5.5 $\times$ 7.1 | 10 $\times$ 5.5 $\times$ 7.1 | 10 $\times$ 5.5 $\times$ 7.1 |
| Weight (lb.) | 7 | 7 | 7 |
| POWER | |||
| Power supply unit | 1 $\times$ 250 W | 1 $\times$ 250 W | 1 $\times$ 250 W |
| Voltage | 100–240 V, 50–60 Hz | 100–240 V, 50–60 Hz | 100–240 V, 50–60 Hz |
vCFA requirements and support
| Hyper-V | VMware | |
|---|---|---|
| Version | 2008 R2–2016 2019 is planned for 2020 Q2 | vSphere ESXi 5.0–6.7 |
| Location | On-premises | On-premises |
| Hardware requirements | Same as for physical CFAs based on sizing needs | Same as for physical CFAs based on sizing needs |
| Bootability | Nested virtualization should be enabled. Only Hyper-V 2016 supports local boot | Nested virtualization should be enabled |
| White-labeling | N/A | Only with VMware vCenter |
Deployment and replication configurations
CFA can automatically send data to another location. Secondary CFA is always passive, i.e. it accepts the replicated data from the primary CFA, but can’t back up extra endpoints.
| Primary CFA onsite and secondary CFA in our cloud | Primary CFA onsite and secondary CFA elsewhere | Primary CFA onsite and secondary CFA in a public cloud | Standalone primary CFA | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Description | Data is replicated to a secondary CFA in one of our datacenters in US, UK or Canada. This is the default approach | Data is replicated to a secondary CFA deployed elsewhere | Data is replicated to a secondary CFA deployed within one of public clouds | No replication. Data may be taken offsite by archiving to an external USB disk |
| Locations | US (Utah), UK (Nottingham), Canada (Toronto) | Customer’s choice | AWS, GCP, Microsoft Azure | N/A |
| Ownership and secondary infrastructure management | Infrascale | Customer | Customer | N/A |
| Seeding | Yes | Yes | N/A | N/A |
| Cloud boot | Yes | Yes | Microsoft Azure – Yes, as long as instance supports nested virtualization. GCP, AWS – No | N/A |
| Cloud boot scalability | Dedicated CFA – limited by hardware of the dedicated CFA. Shared virtual environment – limited same as primary CFA, burst is available on request | Limited by hardware of the secondary CFA | Limited by the secondary CFA, which can be burst by the customer | N/A |
| Orchestration and IP restore | Yes | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| VPN | Yes, managed by us | Yes, managed by customer | Yes, managed by customer | N/A |
| WAN acceleration | Yes | Yes | Yes | N/A |
| Redundant network and hardware infrastructure | Yes | N/A | Yes | N/A |
CFA security and data encryption
Data on a local CFA can be encrypted using LUKS, an industry standard hard disk encryption system built into Linux. This allows protecting data from being accessed offline, for example, if you replace a failed disk in the RAID, you don’t need to worry about someone recovering your sensitive data from it.
See also
Transfer of data to the cloud is performed over AES-256–encrypted connection.
Data at rest in the datacenter is always encrypted using AES-256. Encryption key is random, stored on the customer’s cloud instance, and never leaves it.
User credentials for the CFA are stored using the standard Linux credential store.
Datacenter security
We use Tier 3 and Tier 4 datacenters. These are certified under SAS 70 Type II and SSAE 16, secured with video surveillance 24x7 and biometric access controls to limit physical access to the datacenter floors. All servers are security-hardened before deployment, patched, protected with antivirus software and firewalls.
Protected environments
VMware, Hyper-V, and physical machines
| VMware | Hyper-V | Physical machine DR Image backup | Physical machine File and Folder backup | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hypervisor version | VMware ESXi or vCenter 5.0–6.7 | 2008 R2–2019 1 | N/A | N/A |
| Deployment | Without DR Backup Agent. VMware backups use snapshot functionality. CBT is used. Disk set backup can be configured. Independent persistent disks can be skipped | DR Backup Agent on hypervisor using Microsoft VSS technology. Microsoft RCT isn’t supported | With DR Backup Agent | With DR Backup Agent |
| Backup types | VM DR image | VM DR image | DR image | File level, MS Exchange Server DB, MS Exchange Server mailbox, MS SQL Server DB |
| Backup levels | Full, incremental (synthetic full) | Full, incremental (synthetic full) | Full, incremental (synthetic full) | Full, differential (file-level), incremental |
| Bootability | Yes | Yes | Yes | N/A |
| BACKUP | ||||
| Windows 2 | Any version supported by hypervisor | Any version supported by hypervisor | Desktop: XP SP3, Vista SP2, 7, 8, 8.1, 10 Server: 2003 R2, 2008, 2008 R2, 2012, 2012 R2, 2016, 2019 | Desktop: XP SP3, Vista SP2, 7, 8, 8.1, 10 Server: 2003 R2, 2008, 2008 R2, 2012, 2012 R2, 2016, 2019 |
| Linux | Any version supported by hypervisor | Any version supported by hypervisor | CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, 6, 7 Debian 7, 8 Ubuntu 12.04, 12.10, 13.04, 13.10, 14.04 LTR, 14.10, 15.04 Note: Backup of servers with boot partition on LVM isn’t supported | CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, 6, 7 Debian 7, 8 Ubuntu 12.04, 12.10, 13.04, 13.10, 14.04 LTR, 14.10, 15.04, 16.04, 18.04 Oracle Linux 6.1–6.6, 7.0–7.1 |
| Unix, Novell | Any version supported by hypervisor | Any version supported by hypervisor | N/A | AIX, Solaris, SCO, FreeBSD, Novell NetWare |
| MS SQL Server | 2005, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2019 | 2005, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2019 | 2005, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2019 | 2005, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2017 3 |
| MS Exchange Server DB | MS Exchange Server 2003, 2007, 2010, 2010 DAG, 2013, 2016, 2016 DAG, 2019 | MS Exchange Server 2003, 2007, 2010, 2010 DAG, 2013, 2016, 2016 DAG, 2019 | MS Exchange Server 2003, 2007, 2010, 2010 DAG, 2013, 2016, 2016 DAG, 2019 | MS Exchange Server 2003, 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016 4 |
| MS Exchange Server mailbox | N/A | N/A | N/A | MS Exchange Server 2003, 2007, 2010, 2013 |
| BOOT ON CFA 5 | ||||
| Windows | Desktop: XP SP3, Vista SP2, 7, 8, 8.1, 10 Server: 2003 R2, 2008, 2008 R2, 2012, 2012 R2, 2016, 2019 | Desktop: XP SP3, Vista SP2, 7, 8, 8.1, 10 Server: 2003 R2, 2008, 2008 R2, 2012, 2012 R2, 2016, 2019 | Desktop: XP SP3, Vista SP2, 7, 8, 8.1, 10 Server: 2003 R2, 2008, 2008 R2, 2012, 2012 R2, 2016, 2019 Note: Hyper-V host boot isn’t available | N/A |
| Linux | CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, 6, 7 Debian 7, 8 Ubuntu 12.04, 12.10, 13.04, 13.10, 14.04 LTR, 14.10, 15.04, 16.04, 18.04 Oracle Linux 6.1–6.6, 7.0–7.1 | CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, 6, 7 Debian 7, 8 Ubuntu 12.04, 12.10, 13.04, 13.10, 14.04 LTR, 14.10, 15.04, 16.04, 18.04 Oracle Linux 6.1–6.6, 7.0–7.1 | CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, 6, 7 Debian 7, 8 Ubuntu 12.04, 12.10, 13.04, 13.10, 14.04 LTR, 14.10, 15.04 | N/A |
| Unix | Possible after installation of QEMU drivers on a guest VM | Possible after installation of QEMU drivers on a guest VM | N/A | N/A |
| BOOT VERIFICATION | ||||
| Windows | With health check | With health check | With health check | N/A |
| Linux | Screenshot only | Screenshot only | Screenshot only | N/A |
| Unix | Screenshot only | Screenshot only | N/A | N/A |
| RESTORE | ||||
| Source | VMware hypervisor or inside the VM | Hyper-V hypervisor or inside the VM | Physical machine with DR Backup Agent installed | Appliance Network Share |
| VMware VM backup | Yes, as VM File-level restore to any client on CFA, or to the Appliance Network Share either as VM image component files or as files on disks | File-level restore to any client on CFA, or to the Appliance Network Share either as VM image component files or files on disks | File-level restore as VM image component files or files on disks | File-level restore as VM image component files or files on disks |
| Hyper-V VM backup | As VM image component files or files on disks to any running VM | Yes, as VM File-level restore to any client on CFA, or to the Appliance Network Share either as VM image component files or files on disks | File-level restore as VM image component files or files on disks | File-level restore as VM image component files or files on disks |
| Windows DR Image backup | Not as VM File-level restore as DR image component files or files on disks | Not as VM File-level restore as DR image component files or files on disks | Bare-metal restore (except to NVMe drives) File-level restore as DR image component files or files on disks | File-level restore as DR image component files or files on disks |
| Linux DR Image backup | Not as VM File-level restore as DR image component files or files on disks | Not as VM File-level restore as DR image component files or files on disks | Bare-metal restore (sometimes requires for target disks to be larger than the source ones) File-level restore as DR image component files or files on disks | File-level restore as DR disks component files or files on disks |
| File and Folder backup | File-level restore | File-level restore | File-level restore | File-level restore |
| MS SQL Server backup | N/A | N/A | Database-level restore | File-level restore |
| MS Exchange Server DB backup | N/A | N/A | Database-level restore | File-level restore |
| MS Exchange Server mailbox backup | N/A | N/A | Mailbox-level restore | N/A |
For Browse and Restore, we support ext2, ext3, ext4, XFS, btrfs, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, HFS, HFS+, JFS, ReiserFS, MINIX (1.0, 2.0, 3), exFAT, NILFS2, F2FS on both MBR or GPT partitions, or on software RAIDs or dynamic disks in Windows. ZFS and UFS weren’t tested. Windows Storage Spaces, Reiser4, and ReFS aren’t supported for browse and restore.
VMs in Xen environments
Backup of a VM running on Citrix XenDesktop or XenServer can be performed with the DR Backup Agent installed on the VM. Boot on CFA or restore to a Xen environment of the backup image isn’t supported.
Citrix NetScaler VPX CFAs running on VMware or Hyper-V can be backed up and restored. Boot isn’t supported at the moment.
Backup schedules
Schedules support monthly, weekly, daily, hourly, by day of week with per-minute granularity backups.
Backup data retention
For backups of VMware and Hyper-V VMs, you can set retention to keep all backups up to 14 days, one per day up to 14 weeks, one per week up to 1 year, one per month forever.
For File and Folder and DR Image backups of physical machines, you can set for how long to keep full, differential and incremental types of backups.
Data retention is set separately for onsite and cloud/secondary CFAs.
Monitoring and reporting
CFA sends alerts and reports via email about the following events:
- Backup and restore: VM autoregistration report, job success or failure, lack of job progress, daily and weekly summary
- Security audit: User login notification and daily summary
- System: New update available and system settings were changed
- Replication: Failure, communication failure, summary report
- License: Communication failure, violation, license warning
In the Infrascale Dashboard, there’s backup monitoring section for all CFAs of the account with email notification and integration with ConnectWise Manage and Autotask PSA.
Integrations
- ConnectWise Manage (billing, ticketing, Dashboard embedding, asset (CFA) tracking)
- Autotask PSA (ticketing)
White-labeling
CFA can be white-labeled to a certain extent, i.e. some options will still have Infrascale name. White-labeling is supported on all physical CFA models, and on the VMware vCFAs.
White-labeling isn’t available for Hyper-V, KVM/Nutanix, AWS, GCP, and Microsoft Azure vCFAs.
Deduplication file system
We use proprietary technology called DDFS. All data is split in 64K-blocks, and only one unique instance of each block is stored on disk. We calculate the number of all instances in the entire stored data per each block.