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Solution Brief Archiving Data from Barracuda Backup

For most organizations, data growth has become a large problem. Virtual infrastructures continue to expand, end users expect to have access to their data for years (if not forever), and due to compliance and legal reasons, organizations must hold on to their data for longer than ever before. This creates a problem for production environments and for the backup and disaster recovery solutions in place. While the cost of hard drives has become relatively inexpensive, having to store all of that data in production, as well as having secondary copies of it backed up can cause costs to add up. It is for this reason that tape backup has remained a valuable component of an organizations backup and disaster recovery strategy, offering a cost effective long-term storage option. Additionally, with the rise of inexpensive , solutions such as and Glacier have become just as vital.

Introducing the Backup Export Tool for Barracuda Backup While Barracuda Backup is a leading disk-based backup and disaster recovery solution, the ever-changing technology landscape and the problems our customers are facing have led to the release of the Barracuda Backup Export Tool. The Backup Export Tool, free for all Barracuda Backup customers, allows Barracuda Backup users to export and archive the historical revisions of data backed up and stored on Barracuda Backup appliances and virtual appliances. The Backup Export Tool is installed on a media server in the same network as the Barracuda Backup appliance. Once installed, users are able to browse their Barracuda Backup through the Backup Export Tool, locate the desired data for export, and export it for long-term archival to external media devices such as tape drives, tape libraries, virtual tape libraries (VTL), USB drives, network attached storage (NAS), and the AWS Storage Gateway-VTL, which stores data in Amazon S3 and Glacier. Users can choose to export data manually or configure a schedule to automatically export weekly, monthly, or yearly historical revisions.

Barracuda Backup

Infrastructure External Media Figure 1: Backup Export Tool The Backup Export Tool was designed to allow users the ability to export data that is protected by Barracuda Backup to external or more cost effective storage for long-term archival or compliance reasons, which may require data to be stored on tape or other form of media. The Backup Export Tool is not intended to provide disaster recovery capability, and exporting data from Barracuda Backup does not remove that data from the appliance; it simply makes an alternate copy of the data that can be stored wherever desired. Once exported successfully, users can choose to manually purge archived data off of their Barracuda Backup devices to manage storage more effectively. Restoring data exported by the Backup Export Tool is performed in the same manner as the export process. While data cannot be restored back to Barracuda Backup, it can be restored directly to any computer or supported device on the same network. Unlike other solutions where data must first be recovered to the backup device, Barracuda’s Backup Export Tool lets you restore archived data directly to the end user or target device.

What Kind of Data can be Exported Using the Backup Export Tool? Data stored “in-retention” in Barracuda Backup can be exported to external media for long-term archiving, or as an alternate copy. Data that is “in-retention” is physically stored on a Barracuda Backup appliance or virtual appliances, and has not been purged per the configured retention policy. This data includes file system data, SQL and Exchange Server databases, and Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware virtual disks. Additionally, the Backup Export Tool is capable of viewing and exporting data stored on a Barracuda Backup device that is configured as a replication target in a site-to-site replication model. Additional export options include encryption and compression of the exported data. For information on how to configure the Backup Export Tool, see the technical documentation located in Barracuda Campus.

AWS Client Initiator Gateway VM Tape Drive VTL iSCSI Archiving

iSCSI Media Client Backup Changer Virtual Tape Library Virtual Tape Shelf Barracuda Export tool Backed by Backed by Backup Amazon S3 Amazon Glacier Cache Upload Storage Bu er Retrieving Client Hypervisor Host

Figure 2: Barracuda Backup and AWS Storage Gateway-VTL Architecture

Archiving to (AWS) In Barracuda Backup version 6.3, support for Amazon’s AWS Storage Gateway-VTL has been added to the Backup Export Tool. The AWS Storage Gateway-VTL enables customers to archive their data using Amazon S3 and Glacier cloud storage. Gateway-VTL provides a virtual tape infrastructure that eliminates the operational burden of provisioning, scaling, and maintaining a physical tape infrastructure. The AWS Storage Gateway can either run as a virtual machine on-premises, or in AWS as an EC2 instance. For more information about the AWS Storage Gateway-VTL, see the AWS Storage Gateway User Guide.

Conclusion Barracuda Backup is a complete cloud-integrated solution for protecting physical, virtual, and SaaS environments. Barracuda continues to build Barracuda Backup around the cloud, providing customers with features such as Cloud LiveBoot, offsite vaulting, and the ability to access and download files from anywhere with an connection. Despite the advantages that the cloud provides, some organizations are still required to keep data on-premises or prefer to keep data on external media such as tape. Barracuda Backup now provides customers with an alternative option for long-term data archival with the Backup Export Tool.

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