Storage Provider Profiles

This section will help you to understand what are the Storage Provider profiles and how to manage them.

Topics

• What is a Storage Provider Profile?
• Storage Profiles parameters
  • AWS
  • Azure
• Encryption keys rotation
• Manage Storage Profiles
  • Add/Edit a Storage Provider profile - interactive mode
  • Add/Edit a Storage Provider profile - unnatended mode
  • List Storage Provider profiles - interactive mode
  • Delete a Storage Provider profile - interactive mode
  • Delete a Storage Provider profile - unnatended mode
• Set Storage Providers for backups & restores
  • Provider profile for restore backups - Disaster Recovery
  • Provider profile for restore backups - System Copy

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What is a Storage Provider Profile?

A Storage Provider profile is a set of parameters that handle all the needed information to connect to the target storage provider. These parameters will hold the bucket/container name, the location, the Encryption Mode and the Encryption Keys to apply to the objects generated by the SAP backup and also the Storage Class to be used to use at REST.

You can have multiple profiles in your CxLink Backup configuration but only one can be set as the target for your backups and the same, or a different one, as the source to retrieve during restore processes.

So why creating multiples profiles? In some scenarios you may need to retrieve a backup from another system to recover from disaster scenario or to perform a System Copy.

Imagine that your SAP Server is down and you want to restore this server in another AWS Account to comply with your disaster recovery requirements. You will have a recover profile to retrieve the latest available backup from the primary server but start performing backups in a different storage to avoid overwriting the source backups.

Imagine also that you have a SAP Quality server, and you want to periodically restore backups from your production server. You can set the Quality bucket as the target for backups, but use the Production server profile to restore and refresh your database.

Below you can find an example on how Providers section will look like in the emory configuration file:

Expand to see an example

Providers:
  production:
    Type: Azure
    Azure:
      AccountName: emoryaccount
      AccountKey: 9b59ddfef56b6f83e62b69cbb60ef008f73d621636bfe49310875b1428b3e302bf23b8b8399b1f190c9063a0a73f52b560c5ddf7901386f10115718e5ac61713df12285dfeb2185b4780e7fbc9ed27fb41ea441479013fa1ef28bf852e908a2020699312c80266d9ebb7b617b0445e5e1933511282dd
      ContainerName: emory-backups
      BufferSize: 83886080
      MaxBuffers: 30
      TierType: Cool
  develop:
    Type: AWS
    AWS:
      Region: eu-west-1
      Bucket: emory-backup-demo
      Encryption: AES256
      StorageClass: Standard
      Tagging: true
      MemoryBuffer: 83886080
      Concurrency: 30

Storage Profiles parameters

AWS

Parameter	Possible Values	Description
Region	Any supported AWS Region (f.e. eu-west-1)	All AWS regions are supported by CxLink Backup
Bucket	Your Amazon S3 bucket name
Encryption	AES256 or aws-kms	AES256: Default encryption key for the AWS Account aws-kms: You want to use an Customer Managed Encryption Key
CustomerKey	- leave empty if AES256 is selected Customer Key name if aws-kms is selected	Your Customer Managed encryption Key
StorageClass	- Standard - Intelligent_Tiering - Standard_IA - OneZone_IA - Reduced_Redundancy	Amazon S3 Object Storage Classes. More information in https://aws.amazon.com/s3/storage-classes/
Tagging	true or false	Add backup information in the Amazon S3 Object
MemoryBuffer	value: 5MB <> 512MB	AWS Specific: Memory used for each parallel process in the backup execution
Concurrency	Default value: 5	AWS Specific: Number of Amazon S3 threads that can work in parallel during backups

Azure

Parameter	Possible Values	Description
Storage account	Azure storage account name	Azure storage account name
Storage account key	Azure storage account key or blank	Azure storage account key
Container	Your Azure storage account container
Access tier class	- Cool - Hot - Archve	Azure storage access tier class
Tagging	true or false	Add backup information in the Azure Storage Object
MemoryBuffer	value: 5MB <> 512MB	Azure Specific: Memory used for each parallel process in the backup execution
Concurrency	Default value: 5	Azure Specific: Number of Azure storage threads that can work in parallel during backups

Performance Issues

Depending on the number of Concurrency processes and the Memory Buffer set you can notice some performance degradation. Ensure that the values are correct for your server.

Estimation formula for memory consumption (this is just an example, you need to adjust the values to your server capacity)

Total Memory used = Concurrency * MemoryBuffer

Encryption keys rotation

Encryption keys rotation strategy for the storage profile configured has to be defined and executed by you following the corresponding provider documentation:

AWS KMS Keys rotation

Azure Storage Account Keys management

Manage Storage Profiles

This section will guide you in the steps of creating, modifing and deleting Storage Profiles.

All the following actions will be managed from the Storage Providers profile section in the Interactive menu. To start it, execute the emory settings tool as SAP Database Administrator user

/opt/emory/emory

and choose the Storage Providers profiles option:

? CxLink Backup:  [Use arrows to move, enter to select, type to filter]
  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Storage Providers profiles
  Set storage providers for backup/restore, disaster recovery and system copy
  Backups Lifecycle settings
  Monitoring
  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  License
  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Logging file settings
  Debug traces
  Show relevant information of this CxLink Backup
  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Catalog & Backups management
  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Generate troubleshooting package to be sent to Syntax Support
  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Exit

Add/Edit a Storage Provider profile - interactive mode

In this section you will be able to define the access to remote storage destination as well as its properties. We will use this providers profiles to store o retrieve our backups.Follow these steps to add a new Storage Provider profile for your backups:

• Choose Add

  ? Select action to perfom:   [Use arrows to move, enter to select, type to filter]
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  > Add
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Back
  

• Chooose a name for your provider profile (in this example, development):

  ? Select action to perfom:  Add
  ? Enter provider profile name:  development
  

• Select your desired provider from the available list:

  ?? Select provider:   [Use arrows to move, enter to select, type to filter]
  > AWS
    Azure
  

Provider profile for restore backups - Disaster Recovery

In some scenarios you may need to retrieve a backup from another system to recover from disaster scenario. To allow CxLink Backup to recover from a different system and storage, you will need to create a new Storage Provider profile with the source information.

TIP

If None is specified in this section, CxLink Backup will use the profile set in the Provider profile to store backups section to recover the database.

• Select [DR scenarios] Provider profile to restore backups from the options:

  ? Select :   [Use arrows to move, enter to select, type to filter]
    Provider profile to store backups [ - None - ]
  > [DR scenarios] Provider profile to restore backups [ - None - ]
    [System Copy] Provider profile to restore backups from different SID, System Copy method [ - None - ]
    Back
  

• Select a provider profile from the list:

  ? Select :  [DR scenarios] Provider profile to restore backups [ - None - ]
  ? Select provider profile:   [Use arrows to move, enter to select, type to filter]
  > aws_dev_provider
    aws_prod_provider
    azure_dev_provider
    None
  

Provider profile for restore backups - System Copy

In some scenarios you may need to retrieve a backup from another system to perform System Copies or to recover from a disaster scenario. To allow CxLink Backup to recover from a different system and storage, you will need to create a new Storage Provider profile with the source data.

Note: system copy is not available for all databases supported by cxLink Backup

TIP

If None is specified in this section, CxLink Backup will use the profile set in the Provider profile to store backups section to recover the database.

• Select [System Copy] Provider profile to restore backups from different SID, System Copy method from the options:

  ? Select :   [Use arrows to move, enter to select, type to filter]
    Provider profile to store backups [ - None - ]
    [DR scenarios] Provider profile to restore backups [ - None - ]
  > [System Copy] Provider profile to restore backups from different SID, System Copy method [ - None - ]
    Back
  

• Choose the profile that you want to use to store backups

  ? Select :  [System Copy] Provider profile to restore backups from different SID, System Copy method [ - None - ]
  ? Select provider profile:   [Use arrows to move, enter to select, type to filter]
  > aws_dev_provider
    aws_prod_provider
    azure_dev_provider
    None