Learn how to use Snapshot Center for data backup, restore and management

COURSE OBJECTIVES

Upon completion of this course you should be able to:

1. Use ASUSTOR Snapshot Center to create, restore, and manage Volume, MyArchive and iSCSI LUN snapshots.

PREREQUISITES

Course Prerequisites:

None

Students are expected to have a working knowledge of:

N/A

OUTLINE

1. Introducing ASUSTOR Snapshot Center

2. Create Btrfs Volume

2.1 Initialize NAS

2.2 Recreate Volume

3. Introducing Snapshot Center

3.1 Overview

3.2 Volume

3.3 iSCSI LUN

1. Introducing ASUSTOR Snapshot Center

ADM now has the capability to perform volume snapshots with Snapshot Center and Btrfs. Snapshot Center makes it easier to manage, schedule, create and restore snapshots. Schedules can be set to create snapshots or be manually created at any time. Snapshots also make it incredibly easy to restore previous versions of files and can be integrated with existing iSCSI LUNs in Snapshot Center with all volume snapshots for easy browsing and restoration.

System requirements for Volume snapshots: AS31, 32, 40, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 61, 62, 63, 64, 70, Lockerstor, Lockerstor Gen2, Lockerstor Gen3, Lockerstor Pro, Flashstor, Flashstor Gen2, Drivestor Lite (AS11TL), Drivestor Pro Gen2 (AS33 v2). iSCSI LUN snapshots supported in other models.

2. Create Btrfs Volume

Volumes must be formatted with Btrfs to support snapshots.

2.1 Initialize NAS

The options for formatting as Btrfs are found in both 1-Click Setup and Custom Setup. Enable Btrfs to ensure your volume will support snapshots.

• Select "1-Click Setup" or "Custom Setup"

• 1-Click Setup

• Custom Setup Volume Settings

2.2 Recreate Volume

Volumes formatted as ext4 cannot be converted to Btrfs. To format a volume to Btrfs, all data will need to be backed up and the volume recreated as a Btrfs volume. If recreating Volume 1, apps will need to be reinstalled and settings will also need to be backed up and imported.

Step 1

• Recreating a volume will erase all data on that volume. Back up all important data to another storage device before continuing. ADM has a variety of options for backing up data.
• Click [Backup & Restore] in ADM, and select [System Settings] [Export Settings] to back up system settings.

Step 2

• After all needed data is backed up, click [Storage Manager] in ADM
• Choose the volume that will be reformatted as Btrfs as it will need to be removed before formatting as Btrfs.

Step 3

• Select Btrfs when setting up your volume in the Volume Setup Wizard and ADM will format the volume as Btrfs.
• Copy and restore backed up data.

• Quick setup

• Advanced setup

Step 4

• Click [Backup & Restore] in ADM, and select [System Settings] [Import Settings] to import system settings.

3. Introducing Snapshot Center

Snapshot Center is ADM's app for managing Btrfs and iSCSI snapshots in your NAS. View, delete, schedule and restore snapshot data with Snapshot Center. Snapshots do not take up a lot of space initially and only use more space after modifying files. A volume should not be allowed to completely fill up to capacity as this may interfere with snapshot creation. To save space, feel free to delete unneeded or unnecessary snapshots.

3.1 Overview

Overview for Btrfs volumes and iSCSI LUN snapshots.

• History: Search snapshots by date of creation.
• Scheduled Tasks: Lists information about scheduled tasks.

3.2 Volume

Displays information about snapshots on Btrfs volumes.

• Manual creation: Click the icon to manually create a snapshot.

• Scheduling: Click the icon to schedule automatic snapshot creation. Scheduled snapshots will be named with the time and date of creation.
  1. Once: Creates a snapshot at a specific time and date.
  2. Daily: Snapshots taken every day with intervals of 5 minutes up to 12 hours.
  3. Weekly: One or more days of the week can be set to create snapshots with options for daily included.

• Settings: Click the icon. Snapshots can be locked and retention rules can be set. Snapshot Center limits saved snapshots to 256. Upon reaching the limit, schedules can be terminated or Snapshot Center will automatically remove the oldest unlocked snapshot. When a snapshot is locked, it will not be removed automatically.

When a volume's used capacity is greater than 95% of volume capacity, unlocked snapshots will be automatically deleted. If a volume's used capacity is greater than the upper limit after deleting all unlocked snapshots, no new snapshots will be made. (Introduced in ADM 4.2)

• Restore: A new snapshot can be created before restoring as a backup in the even of unintended consequences.

• Edit: Edits snapshot information.

• Remove: Removes selected snapshot. Multiple snapshots can be removed by holding Shift.

Note: ADM will stop creating snapshots if a new snapshot exceeds the maximum amount of snapshots while all previous snapshots are locked. Users need to manually remove the locked snapshots and then can create snapshots again.

• Preview: Previews snapshots in File Explorer.

In preview mode, previous versions of files are accessible in File Explorer. Download or copy files contained within snapshots to restore previous versions of files as needed.

3.3 iSCSI LUN

Displays information about snapshots contained within iSCSI LUNs.

• Manual creation: Click the icon to manually create a snapshot.

• Scheduling: Click the icon to schedule automatic snapshot creation. Scheduled snapshots will be named with the time and date of creation.
  1. Once: Creates a snapshot at a specific time and date.
  2. Daily: Snapshots taken every day with intervals of 5 minutes up to 12 hours.
  3. Weekly: One or more days of the week can be set to create snapshots with options for daily included.

• Settings: Click the icon. Snapshots can be locked and retention rules can be set. Snapshot Center limits saved iSCSI LUN snapshots to 254. Upon reaching the limit, schedules can be terminated or Snapshot Center will automatically remove the oldest unlocked snapshot. When a snapshot is locked, it will not be removed automatically.

• Restore: Selects one iSCSI LUN snapshot for restoration.

• Edit: Edits snapshot information.

• Remove: Removes selected snapshot. Multiple snapshots can be removed by holding Shift.

Note: ADM will stop creating snapshots if a new snapshot exceeds the maximum amount of snapshots while all previous snapshots are locked. Users need to manually remove the locked snapshots and then can create snapshots again.