Every DDP now comes with Archiware P5 pre-installed and the license for P5 Backup is included with the DDP hardware.
Every installation gains immediate professional grade Backup to LTO tapes – the technology used by large corporations, banks and broadcasters. Included P5 Backup license allows for backup to LTO tapes using a single tape drive. An unlimited number of tapes can be written and P5 Backup keeps track of all tapes and files written. P5 Backup catalog can be searched and browsed using a web browser.
To connect the LTO tape drive to the DDP a SAS card needs to be in the DDP. The DDP can be ordered with the SAS card installed or the card can be ordered later and retrofitted. After activating and entering the license using the P5 setup assistant, the Backup can be configured and running within minutes including auto detection for LTO drives and libraries.
The resulting Backup plan can be modified and includes incremental, full and progressive Backup modes.
You can access the Archiware portal by clicking on the ‘Archiware’ icon in the DDP web GUI.
After log into the Archiware interface, before starting using your LTO tape drive you must first initialise it by following the procedure below:
1. Adding the LTO tape drive
1) Click on the ‘Backup’ button from the top menu
2) Click on the ‘Standalone Drive’ button from the left menu
3) Click on the ‘New Tape Drive’ button from the bottom menu
In order to automatically scan for connected LTO devices and tapes, click on the ‘next’ button of the window that just appeared. In the Description field, you can additionally describe this device. Select the correct drive type from the pull-down menu and click Install to confirm your input.
In latest versions of Archiware, you might be asked wether you want to label the new tape drive straight away or do it later. By default the “Do not label yet” option is selected, please keep it as it is and finish installing the new drive.
2. Creating a new pool
The new tape drive must be assigned to a so-called volume pool through the process of labeling.
The volume pool can be viewed as a large storage, where the capacity is limited by the number of tapes. If the capacity needs to be increased, tapes can be added by labeling media.
1) Click on the ‘Pools’ button from the left menu
2) Click on the ‘New’ button from the bottom menu
Fill the ‘Name’ and ‘Description’ fields of the window that appeared and select ‘Backup’ and ‘Tape’ from the pull-down menus in ‘Usage’ part:
After clicking the ‘Apply’ button and closing the window, you can finally label the tape in order to assign it the newly created pool.
3. Labeling the tape drive
Before a media can be used in P5, it must be labeled. Labeling physically writes metadata on the media in order to uniquely identify it using the name of the pool it belongs to, among other things.
In order to label a tape drive please follow the procedure below:
1) Click on the ‘Standalone Drive’ button from the left menu
2) Click on the newly added tape drive
3) Click on the ‘Label’ button from the bottom menu
Then finally you can assign the tape drive to the pool by selecting its name in the pull-down menu:
You are now able to use the tape drive as a media for backing up your DDP files, the next step is now to define a backup plan according to your needs and the constraints you want to define. The procedure is explained in the dedicated topic of this knowledge base, so please do not hesitate to check it out in order to get familiar with all the P5Backup software possibilities.