Planning Guide

This guide is for administrators who are planning and deploying backup for their company or customers. Use this article as a handbook to guide you through a successful implementation.

To get the most out of this guide, you should already have a solid technical background in network and server administration.

Upon reading this guide, you will learn:

• CrashPlan PRO backup concepts and architecture
• Best practices for backup and restoration management

You don't have to go it alone. CrashPlan PRO Services provide the skills to successfully implement what you need now and the expertise to anticipate what you’ll need later, ultimately delivering on time and budget.

Guarantee your implementation goes smoothly from architectural analysis to production. PRO Services backup experts develop highly effective deployment and support strategies within your organization to ensure the success of your project from start to finish.

• First, our system engineers review your backup requirements and current infrastructure to design an enterprise backup strategy that meets your current and future needs.
• Next, CrashPlan PRO experts install and configure PRO Server for optimal setup and provide best practices for deploying PRO Client throughout your organization.
• Before you go-live, our certified trainers build sustained in-house expertise for your key stakeholders and essential staff.

• Contact sales@crashplanpro.com to learn more about PRO Services can guarantee backup success in your organization.

• CrashPlan PRO Feature Overview
• User Interface Reference
• Step By Step Instructions on Common Tasks
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Troubleshooting Guide
• Online Forums and Help Desk

CrashPlan PRO is a high performance, cross-platform backup solution that provides continuous protection onsite, offsite and online for the enterprise.

With the CrashPlan PRO, you can back up any computer to any number of backup servers in any location. It utilizes a client/server architecture with the clients installed on each machine you want to back up.

We strongly recommend that you back up to multiple destinations to ensure the greatest protection and maximum restore flexibility.

This section covers the concepts necessary for preparing enterprise-level backup deployments. It includes the things you should do first, as well as what to do after your backup completes.

We strongly recommend reviewing all of the topics in this section before rolling out a large scale backup deployment. Action Item headings identify operations you should do as soon as possible.

If you haven't already installed CrashPlan PRO, our Getting Started Guide is the fastest way to get from download to backing up.

The following table describes CrashPlan PRO software and support licensing.

CrashPlan PRO customers receive the following keys for registration, activation and license seat assignment:

	Key Name	Description	Provided	Cost
	Master License Key	~150 character encrypted string that activates your PRO Server installs. Identifies your server(s) as belonging to your company or organization.	After you register for a Master License Key	FREE
	Registration Key	16 character string that is tied to your Master License Key. Required for placing orders for seats or support.	After you register for a Master License Key	FREE
	Product License Key	~100 character encrypted string that adds additional PRO Client seats and support, tied to your Master License Key	After you purchase a license pack.	Purchased

Each of these keys are emailed to you at time of registration or purchase. You can also view your key information at any time in the PRO Server admin console Licensing screen.

How many computers does your organization need backed up? This is the number of PRO Client seat licenses you need to purchase. After one year, we strongly suggest you purchase support licenses for continued support and upgrades.

Most companies activate all of their PRO Server installs with a single Master License Key.

If you are a service provider or have multiple organizations with user isolation needs, then you may want to consider obtaining multiple Master License Keys.

Purchasing a CrashPlan PRO Client license means that you own a permanent license to install and use the PRO Client software. You never have to renew your PRO Client seat license. It is yours to use forever. It never expires.

Product Keys for a PRO Client seat license also include 1 year of support and upgrades. You can add more seats for which you will get a corresponding number of 1-year support licenses.

Important - If you skip renewing your support license and later decide that you want to upgrade to the current version, you need to purchase a support license for each year you missed.

When you purchase additional seats or support licenses, PRO Server determines a new support expiration date so that support for all your seats expire on the same day.

Having multiple backup destinations, which is unique to CrashPlan, is the key to a successful backup strategy.

During the course of your backup you'll want to stay informed about the status and health of your backup.

While the PRO Server does contain an internal mail server, this mail server is fairly lightweight and is intended for demo purposes. We recommend configuring an external mail server for production environments. Documentation is available here.

1. Click Settings > Edit Server Settings
2. Click Alerts and add your email address on the Alerts page.
3. Click Reports and add your email address on the Reports page.
4. You can also override the system settings by organization on Edit Organization

Fundamentally, CrashPlan PRO is a way of providing reliable, long-term storage. In addition to providing enough space for your backups, your storage needs to be fast enough to provide your users with a good experience and robust enough to handle the extremely multi-threaded, random I/O nature of storing backups for hundreds or thousands of clients simultaneously.

When considering storage to deploy, you need to assess:

• capacity
• type
• performance

CrashPlan PRO protects your data in a number of ways, including regularly testing that your archive is healthy, and alerting you if it detects a file that cannot be restored. Even so, there are times when a corrupted archive cannot be repaired. For complete protection, when planning your storage capacity requirements, we strongly recommend setting up multiple storage locations.

On average server-side backup archives will be roughly the same size as your backup file selection. The backup file selection size appears on the Backup tab in PRO Client. Because of CrashPlan PRO's compression and data de-duplication, your initial backup might be considerably less, but over time, as additional versions are stored, your archive will eventually grow. If you select 10GB for backup, plan on requiring 10GB on the server.

Note: This is just a guideline for capacity planning. Depending on how well your data compresses or your version retention settings, you may use far less server-side storage than this. On the other hand, if your users create huge amounts of data each day then more capacity may be required.

IMPORTANT Always, always, as a matter of routine, back up to multiple destinations. Anything can happen at a single site, so plan on storing your data in more than one place right from the start! If you want to store 10GB then you'll need 10GB of storage at each destination.

• Exclude first - If you're concerned about the size of your user's backups or are trying to decide whether to allow media files (photos and movies), consider excluding those items from the start. You can always opt for a more inclusive policy later.

• Versioning - Check your Version settings carefully. The default settings are quite conservative. For example, by default CrashPlan PRO keeps a copy of user-deleted files forever. To manage the size of your archive, consider adjusting these settings for your situation.

• Multiple servers - PRO Server can be run in Multi-Server configurations. For large scale deployments, consider using multiple servers configured as a Master with Slaves in order to scale up to the capacity you'll need for your userbase.
  • Multi-Server support
  • Set up a PRO Server Slave

• Add capacity - Plan on adding capacity to server, which you can do at anytime. CrashPlan PRO's backup archive migration tool allows you to rebalance your storage.
  • Add network-attached-storage (NAS) mount points on-the-fly.
  • Move archives to free up space using backup archive migration.

In general we recommend relying on direct attached disk for most installations. Disks are fast, cheap, efficient and endlessly configurable.

• USB/Firewire - A USB or firewire drive will work just fine for small installations: no more than 20 users, with less than 1TB of total storage.
  Keep in mind: there are speed limitations associated with this type of storage. For example, restoring a 100GB file selection will take at least 90 minutes with a 20MB/s transfer rate from your drive. If your drive is doing other things at the same time it will take even longer.
• Direct Attached Storage (DAS) - Medium to large installations can easily be satisfied with direct attached storage, generally configured as a raid. PRO Server has no upper limit of storage size, so you are free to mount 100TB volumes if you have the space available.
• Storage Area Networks (SAN) - As with the DAS installations, PRO Server can handle storage mounts of arbitrary size. You're free to create whatever size volumes are convenient for you and attach them as they are.
• Network Attached Storage (NAS) - This term refers to any of the standard ethernet-based protocols such as NFS. The challenge for many of these protocols is the multi-threaded nature of servicing dozens of CrashPlan PRO clients simultaneously. While the data throughput of your NAS may be acceptable for large, single-file transfers, throughput can change rapidly under the load of processing random I/O for all of your clients. In addition to the backup data, your PRO Server will be maintaining the archives over time, finding outdated versions to remove, etc. This activity adds to the overall network load placed on your NAS throughput. Unlike the PRO Client to Server communication, which is built to operate over a WAN, your PRO Server will be accessing the backup archives as if they are local files, so speed is paramount.

Ultimately the choice of NAS depends on many factors and you may need to monitor your solution closely as it grows to ensure that it continues to meet your needs.

Your NAS should be able to sustain 90MB/s while under a random I/O load of at least 30 clients.

The attached volume must be mounted read/write for the CrashPlan PRO Server user. Other than that there are no special requirements - you may use whatever mount options are appropriate for your installation.

At this time PRO Server does not support writing to a mapped drive on Windows. There is a workaround that many users have used to great effect to support this, but it requires special care to configure properly. Please take this into account during your planning. Click to learn about more about the workaround.

In order for PRO Server to work well, here are some target numbers for storage performance.

Below are recommended I/O speeds for different storage types:

Storage Speed	Typical Speed	Time to Maintain 1TB @ Recommended Speed	Recommended Maximum Users
Direct Attached (external)	20MB/sec	14.65 hours	50
Direct Attached (internal)	300MB/sec (same as standard SATA drive)	0.97 hours	40 200 w/RAID 5
Network Attached (NAS)	90MB/sec (720Mb/s)	3.23 hours	1000 (w/20 drives)

Consider using the same hardware that we use to allow users to back up to us. Our PRO Hardware meets the strictest requirements because our business demands that it does. Dedicated to backup, it is engineered exclusively for CrashPlan. Learn more.

By default, user accounts and associated backup archive data is secured with a randomly-generated 448-bit encryption key. The encryption key itself is also secured with your account password.

If you require additional security (e.g., for compliance), you can upgrade your security at the computer level with PRO Client or organization wide with PRO Server.

See the following articles to learn more:

• Archive Encryption Key Security
• Upgrade Security in PRO Client
• Upgrade Security in PRO Server

Determining what user files you want to back up can greatly impact your storage requirements. Do you want to back up everything? Just documents? Do you include mp3s and videos?

In PRO Server, you have several ways of specifying what should be included / excluded in the backup set. You can:

• use substitution variables
• specify filename patterns using wildcards
• specify file extensions to exclude
• use regular expressions

• Using Include and Exclude Filters

By default, CrashPlan PRO backs up files in the user's home directory, including file metadata.
Supported metadata by platform:

Mac

Windows

• Permissions: UGO, RWX

There are some types of files that CrashPlan excludes from backing up (called Admin Excludes) or hides from the file selection list (Hidden Files). Users cannot change these settings in PRO Client. Only administrators can change this setting in the PRO Server admin console. All patterns are in Java Regular Expression format. See Using Include / Exclude Filters.

Default Admin Excludes

PRO Server provides numerous settings for controlling backup policies and permissions.

Take a moment to review the available settings so you can comply with your organization's requirements:

• Managing Default Client Settings
• PRO Server Settings

File retention policy controls how many versions of a file should be kept and how long they should be retained after a file has been deleted.

Establishing good file retention policies helps control backup archive disk consumption and may be necessary for compliance reasons. Learn more about file retention.

CrashPlan PRO allows you to install as many clients as you wish. It is not until you click the Backup button that we check org and server seat quotas. If you've reached a quota, we leave that computer ready to automatically start backing up as soon as the quota is lifted.

As the server administrator you will need to do one of these two things when you see that an organization quota is reached:

• Deactivate those computers that are not backing up because they are over a quota OR
• Increase the org and/or server limit so those computers can automatically start backing up.

Organizations using more than their quota do count against your server licenses. It is up to you as the administrator to manage the orgs and do one of the above two steps if an org goes over it's limit.

Protect your backup archives and your PRO Server database, which holds your encryption keys. In order to recover from a server-side failure, you need a database dump and a copy of the backup archives. Full information on backing up your PRO Server and backup archives is available here.

Here are some common ways of deploying PRO Server in various environments. Keep in mind that in all these configurations you have the option to have us host PRO Server and some or all of the client data, as a backup destination. With CrashPlan PRO, you have the flexibility to back up to PRO Servers as well as PRO Clients.

• Back up all of the office clients to the server onsite and to the client on the owner's home computer that is offsite (small office).
• Back up all customer data to both the onsite client (or slave server) and to the offsite PRO Server (small business consultant).
• Back up all data from multiple sites multiple PRO Servers (large office).

A small office of 10 computers:

• Install PRO Server at the office
• Install PRO Client on each computer you want to back up (LAN connection)
• Install PRO Client on the business owner's home computer (broadband connection) as a secondary offsite destination
• Back up all of the office clients to the server onsite and to the client on the owner's home computer that is offsite

In this scenario, the user could restore directly from the PRO Server over the LAN. If a disaster occurs at the office, the data is also safe and available for being restored on the owner's computer at home.

A provider or consultant for small businesses operates a PRO Server for customers to use as a backup destination. A typical installation looks like this:

1. Install PRO Server at a data center
2. Install PRO Client at the customer's site to receive backups OR
   Install PRO Server slave at the customer's site to receive backups How do I choose?
3. Install PRO Client on each computer at the customer site that you want to back up (LAN connection)

In this scenario, all of the customer's data will be backed up to both the onsite client (or slave server) and to the offsite PRO Server. The user could restore directly from over the LAN. If a disaster occurs at the office, the data is also safe offsite in your data center and available for restore.

CrashPlan PRO's Multi-Server support is ideal for large businesses with multiple sites.

• Install PRO Server in a data center
• Install PRO Server slave at a second data center for secondary backups
• Install PRO Clients on each computer that you want to back up

If you have a large amount of data to back up to offsite destinations, you can decrease the initial backup time by seeding.

Seeding a backup means performing a backup at one location and then shipping or otherwise transporting a copy of the backup archive to another site. It's a way avoiding the initial backup over a WAN. When clients connect to the seeded remote site they'll continue wherever the archive leaves off. The basic steps are:

1. Make a backup to an onsite destination
2. Take a copy of the archive to the remote site
3. Seed the remote site with the archive
4. Start backup from the original client to the remote site

When creating the onsite backup you can back up directly to an attached disk or to another computer on the LAN. For example, you can back up an entire office by dropping in a computer with a 1TB drive, back up all the onsite clients to it and then ship all of the collected archives to the remote site at once.

Learn more about seeding initial backups.

Imagine that you have a company that provides support and technology consulting to home users and to small businesses. Because the service offering you provide to each type of customer is different you want to invoice customers according to their own pricing plan.

1. Create one organization called small businesses.
2. Create another organization called home users.
3. Install CrashPlan PRO using one of the two license keys for each user depending on the organization to which each user belongs.

At the end of each month it's easy to identify the percentage of your storage is used by business and which by end users. In this way, you can invoice individual users according to their different pricing structures.

You can also assign resources within your company to service business users and another to service home users. The administrator for one organization cannot see users belonging to the other organization.

Now let us imagine the same ISP/MSP/ASP lands a large hosted backup contract using CrashPlan. This organization has negotiated pricing agreement that is different from the small business and home user customers.

1. Add an org called XYZ500.
2. Instruct their IT department to install PRO Client on the computers to be backed up using another Master License Key.
   Inform the IT department that the company will be billed for each seat being used, so the Master License Key should be safeguarded from unauthorized users.
3. Create a child org for each department within XYZ500, such as Accounting, Sales, IT.
   If this is a large organization, it might have a separate IT group for each department. If this is the case, you can create managers for each department (child org), so that they have permission to alter/audit/edit only those users in their department. The manager assigned to the parent org XYZ500 (for example, the Manager of IT) can administer anyone in XYZ500 and the child orgs.

As you can see, you have great flexibility when organizing your backup users. Users can have their own account and any number of computers. With our easy to use restore interface, users can restore their laptop to their desktop, and visa versa without the aid of IT. This does not preclude a manager from restoring a user's data on behalf of individual users in his or her organization and respective child orgs.

By default your database is exported each night to folders named 'dbDumps' on each of your defined mount points. We also save a copy to a location that varies for each platform:

An exported database dump includes the server's internal configuration information: orgs, users, computers, reporting data for each account. These files are not large.

By default the server exports its database to the local drive and all mount points. We recommend using this setting.

• Your server will maintain 30 days worth of exported files.
• You can adjust the export behavior in Servers > Dump Database, where you have the option to have the export take place immediately.
• While it is possible to back up these exported files with CrashPlan, you'll also need the raw files on disk. If your server is corrupted, you may not be able to restore the file.

Reference guide to locations of important files

Our Support team is happy to help if you can't find the answer you're looking for on the Support wiki or in the forums. You can email us at support@crashplanpro.com.crashplan-pro-managed-appliance-sheet-v6.pdf