Frequently Asked Questions

Please reach us at info@backupassure.io if you cannot find an answer to your question.

What version of Linux does Backup Assure run on?

What data does Backup Assure collect?

None, your Backup Assure server does not communicate any information back to us. The server does not need to have internet access to work, but does need internet access for automated operating system and security updates.

What are some best practices guidelines?

When possible, deploy Backup Assure in a separate Data Center to your primary products
Backup your products daily, and use your Virtual environment snap shot backup capabilities to backup the Backup Assure server daily or weekly. This will allow you go back further in time than your retention policy. Store Backup Assure snapshot backups off site once a week.
Backup different systems at different times
In Cisco Identity Services Engine, export the ISE CA Certificates. Only required if ISE is a CA.
Get your deployment certified by a Backup Assure technician, it's free.

What happens when my license expires?

We will contact you 30 days before your license expires to order a new one.
Once your license is purchased, your new license key will automatically be sent to you the day the current one expires, and that will be the new license key start date.
The day your license expires you go into a 14 day grace period to apply a new license. This is to provide you with backups if your license is renewed on a weekend or during a holiday.

Can I restore if my license has expired?

Once you are outside of your grace period your products will lose access to Backup Assure, but your backups remain. Once the product is licensed you will have access to create backups and restore data.

Do I need to update Backup Assure or the Operating System?

Backup Assure updates are provided to customers and applied through the web interface.
Operating System updates happen daily along with operating system security updates.

For Catalyst Center API access, what level of permission is required?

Observer-role provides the required permissions for the API integration .
We recommend a service account, so the password does not need to be updated for the API integration.

What is the slider bar used for on the home page?

The slider bar is only for customers who use thin provisioned disk. The default is to purge Catalyst Center assurance data at 90% disk utilisation. By selecting a lower percentage to purge the assurance data, the thin provisioned disk can be better controlled. We recommend allowing backups to go for a few weeks and adjusting the slider bar. When the disk percentage is hit, all assurance backups are purged, and the Catalyst Center will do a new full backup of assurance data. All backups after a full backup are incremental backups.

What time is recommended for the Assurance purge?

The Assurance purge needs to be scheduled at least two hours after the scheduled backup. Purging the data while a backup is in progress will most likely cause data corruption. Take extra care to make sure the time set to purge when the disk percentage hits your set limit is not during a backup.

If I don’t want to backup the Assurance data, can I get a version of Backup Assure without a NFS partition?

No, we do not provide Backup Assure without a NFS mount for Catalyst Center. You can however deploy a single backup disk instead of two backup disk. When this is done the NFS and RSYNC directories share the same disk. We only recommend a single backup disk deployment when NFS will not be used.

What are the built in retention policies?

Backup Assure now comes with configurable retention policies for Catalyst Center, ISE, and FMC. These should be adjusted as needed.

What do I do if all my appliance backups need more disk than my deployed Backup Assure?

You can open a support ticket and we can migrate your license to a larger deployment.
Additional Backup Assure VMs can be deployed, each VM must be fully licensed.

What type of disk should I use thick or thin?

Thin Provisioning Support: Our backup product is fully compatible with thin provisioning, which enables efficient storage usage by allocating space only as data is written. This method minimizes initial disk footprint and optimizes storage for environments with limited capacity needs.
Recommendation for Thick Provisioning: While thin provisioning is supported, we recommend thick provisioning for enhanced performance and stability, particularly in environments with high I/O operations. Thick provisioning can help mitigate latency and improve reliability under heavy workloads.
Eager Zeroed Thick Disk: For users requiring the highest levels of performance and security, eager zeroed thick disks are an excellent choice. This format pre-allocates disk space and zeros all blocks in advance, boosting write performance and enhancing data integrity. However, provisioning a large eager zeroed thick disk directly from an OVA can cause delays or hangs. To avoid this, we suggest deploying the OVA with lazy zero disks initially, then removing and re-adding them as eager zeroed before the first boot.
Lazy Zeroed Thick Disk (Recommended): For an optimal balance between performance and provisioning speed, we recommend lazy zeroed thick disks. This option also pre-allocates disk space but zeros out blocks only as they are written. It provides a seamless experience for our customers, delivering reliable performance while reducing provisioning time.

What do I do about purged backups if I need to go further back in time?

We suggest using your virtual machine backups to backup the Backup Assure VM. You can restore Backup Assure and the last three backups available on the date of that restore will be available.
The restored copy of Backup Assure may end up with a different serial number and invalidate the license. If this happens, open a support case and the restored version will be put into trial mode or the license can be migrated.