BlueXP B & R Support for ONTAP FlexGroup
Now with the latest release of BlueXP Backup and Restore service, you can back up your FlexGroup snapshots to a cloud object store of your choice in AWS, Azure or GCP. The feature is supported on ONTAP version 9.12.1 and above . It supports deployments in SaaS, GOV and Dark-site mode. It uses Active Data Controller version 1.7 for browsing files for single/multiple file restores. The backup and restore workflows for FlexGroups through cloud backup is the same as that for normal FlexVolumes.
Please note the following points on the different features with regard to ONTAP Flexgroup support
Restores:-
Both “Search and Restore” and “ Browse and Restore” are supported with ONTAP FlexGroup volumes. You can do both Volume level restores and File restores using the “Browse and Search” feature.
Please Note:-
- Currently Volume Restores on Cloud Volumes ONTAP is not supported
- Directory Level restores are not supported as well.
- Restoring from FlexGroup volumes to FlexVol volumes and vis-a-versa is not supported.
Archive Tier Support:-
Moving the backups to archival tiers is not supported.
DataLock and Ransomware Support
DataLock and Ransomware detection feature cannot be set up on FlexGroup volumes.
Archival Tier Support for Google Cloud
With the new release of Cloud Backup, Archive Tier Support for Google Cloud has been added. You can, now archive your backups into low-cost Google Cloud Archive.
The BlueXP users who have their deployments on GCP will now be able to create a policy with Archive tiers enabled with the required "archive-after-days" which determines when the backups will be pushed to the Google Archive storage and after which it will be tiered to Google Cloud Archive storage class . Users will be able to View, Set edit and disable the Backup policy to move existing data to the Google Cloud Archive storage class.
Please note: In this release, we support only On-prem working environments on the Google Cloud Archive storage. Cloud Volumes ONTAP will be supported in the upcoming months.
You can do full volumes restores and files from the backups from Google Archive storage. Archive tier implementation on other clouds required the re-hydration of the object from Archive tier to the normal S3 storage, but with Google cloud archive tier the objects that are archived need not be re-hydrated back to the Standard storage class. For this reason, in restore workflows, users will not be prompted to give in the restore priority.
Please note the following points with regard to Google Archive Restores
- folder restores from Google Archive will be supported only with the next release of ONTAP (9.13.1)
- Archived snapshot cannot be restored to a node running below 9.12.1
- There is no requirement to set the restore priority for the objects being restored from archive storage class.