Adding a managed location

A managed location can be organized:

• In a local folder:

  • On a hard drive local to the storage node
  • On a SAN storage that appears to the operating system as a locally attached device

• In a network folder:

  • On an SMB/CIFS share
  • On a SAN storage that appears to the operating system as a network folder
  • On a NAS

• On a tape device that is locally attached to the storage node.

  Tape-based locations are created in the form of tape pools. One tape pool is present by default. If necessary, you can create other tape pools, as described later in this section.

To create a managed location in a local or network folder

1. Do one of the following:

   • Click Backup storage > Add location, and then click Storage node.
   • When creating a protection plan, click Where to back up > Add location, and then click Storage node.
   • Click Settings > Storage nodes, select the storage node that will manage the location, and then click Add location.
2. In Name, specify a unique name for the location. "Unique" means that there must not be another location with the same name, managed by the same storage node.
3. [Optional] Select the storage node that will manage the location. If you selected the last option in step 1, you will not be able to change the storage node.

4. Select the storage node name or IP address that the agents will use to access the location.

   By default, the storage node name is chosen. You may need to change this setting if the DNS server is unable to resolve the name to the IP address, which results in an access failure. To change this setting at a later time, click Backup storage > the location > Edit, and then change the Address field value.

5. Enter the folder path or browse to the desired folder.
6. Click Done. The software checks the access to the specified folder.

7. [Optional] Enable backup deduplication in the location.

   Deduplication minimizes backup traffic and reduces the size of backups stored in the location by eliminating duplicate disk blocks.

   For more information about deduplication restrictions, refer to "Deduplication restrictions".

8. [Only if deduplication is enabled] Specify or change the Deduplication database path field value.

   This must be a folder on a hard drive local to the storage node. To improve the system performance, we recommend that you create the deduplication database and the managed location on different disks.

   For more information about deduplication database, refer to "Deduplication best practices".

9. [Optional] Select whether to protect the location with encryption. Anything written to the location will be encrypted and anything read from it will be decrypted transparently by the storage node, by using a location-specific encryption key stored on the storage node.

   For more information about encryption, refer to "Location encryption".

10. [Optional] Select whether to catalog the backups stored in the location. The data catalog lets you easily find the required version of data and select it for recovery.

    If several cataloging services are registered on the management server, you can select the service that will catalog the backups stored in the location.

    Cataloging can be enabled or disabled at a later time, as described in "How to enable or disable cataloging".

11. Click Done to create the location.

To create a managed location on a tape device

1. Click Backup storage > Add location or, when creating a protection plan, click Where to back up > Add location.
2. Click Tapes.
3. [Optional] Select the storage node that will manage the location.
4. Follow the steps described in "Creating a pool", starting from step 4.