Readme
Revised on July 27, 2020
This document contains the following information you will find important when you use ActiveImage Protector. It is highly recommended that you read this document carefully before starting to install ActiveImage Protector.
Table of Contents
System Requirements
Precautions for Upgrade Installation from an earlier version
Related documents
Limitations and Precautions
CPU
Pentium 4 or above
Main Memory
1024MB is required. (2048MB or above is recommended.)
Hard Disk Space
800MB or more.
* In addition to the above, the following hard disk space is required to reserve working space in "/var/opt". Normally, the following working space is automatically reserved when installing the product.
- 3% of the total volume size of the device, of which entry is added to "/etc/fstab", is required as working space for snapshot (the working space is also used to back up with Deduplication Feature).
- 0.01% of the total volume size of the device, of which entry is added to "/etc/fstab", is required as working space to create bitmap for incremental backup.
* When deduplication compression is used, the work area is 1% of the total used capacity of the backup target, and the volume not included in the backup target.
DVD-ROM Drive
Required to install the product (boot up the product) and boot up Boot Environment.
Linux Distributions
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5 - 5.11 / 6.0 - 6.10 (i386, x86_64), 7.0 - 7.2 (x86_64)
- CentOS 5.5 - 5.11 / 6.0 - 6.10 (i386, x86_64), 7.0 - 7.2 (x86_64)
* Red Hat Enterprise Linux / CentOS 4 and 5.0 - 5.4 are not supported.
* Image mount operation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux / CentOS 7.x are not supported.
* In order to operate Red Hat Enterprise Linux / CentOS 5.5 - 5.11 with the GUI, you need to make a remote connection from the console installed on another host.
- ActiveImage Protector Linux Edition supports only x86 / x86_64 architectures.
- In the event that "Permission denied" error message occurs, please use the following command to remount and try installation again. (Device name: "/media/AIPxx_Linux")
# mount -o remount,exec <Device Name>
- If the following modules are not set up in the environment, before you start setting up this program, “yum” command or “rpm” command must be used to set up RPM package corresponding to the following:
libstdc++.i686, libuuid.i686, glibc.i686, zlib.i686
* For further details, please visit here.
- To launch GUI, the following module must be set up. Before launching GUI, “yum” command or “rpm” command must be used to set up RPM package corresponding to the following:
libxcb.i686, libXrender.i686, libXext.i686, libXau.i686, libX11.i686, libSM.i686, libICE.i686, glib2.i686, freetype.i686, fontconfig.i686, expat.i686, mesa-libGL.i686, xulrunner.i686, systemd-libs.i686
* For further details, please visit here.
- Since this product includes loadable kernel module, it may not run properly on the most recent kernel version released after this product. Before starting to install this product or updating kernel version, please refer to the list of evaluated kernel versions.
* For further details, please visit here.
- GUI components (console) can not be installed in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5 - 5.11, and CentOS 5.5 - 5.11 environments.
File System
XFS / Linux Ext2 / Linux Ext3 / Linux Ext4 / Linux Swap / Linux LVM (volume group and logical volume) / Linux RAID
* Linux RAID is not supported if RAID is configured by using dmraid.
* Bare metal restoration by Linux RAID mdraid is not supported.
* As for backup image files for the file system other than the above, full sector backup is created.
Back to Index
Upgrade Installation from an earlier version (2016 R2)
- In the event that you install the current version of (2016 R2) of the product in the environment the earlier version is already installed, the earlier version is automatically uninstalled and then installation of the current version (2016 R2) will follow. Select [Yes] in [Do you want to keep current configuration?] dialog to migrate the configuration settings as well as the existing profiles and schedules. Browsing history of folder path is not migrated. On contrary, select [No] in the dialog to purge the setting information from the system instead of migrating the existing settings.
- In order to uninstall the earlier version (2016) and then install the current version, please use the installer of the current version (2016 R2) rather than the installer of the earlier version.
- After upgrading / migrating from the earlier version, system restart is not required.
Upgrade Installation from an earlier version (4.5.x)
- Upgrade Installation from an earlier version (4.5.x) to this version (2016) is not supported. Please uninstall the earlier version and then install this version.
- To uninstall the earlier version, please use the version’s installer. Installer of this version does not support uninstallation of an earlier version.
- Settings or profiles configured with AIP of an earlier version are not inherited to this version. Please make sure [Keep current configuration] is disabled when uninstalling an earlier version.
Activation Information
- If the earlier version (2016) of the product is already activated, reactivation of the product is not required.
- Even if you already activated the product of an earlier version (4.5.x), you need to activate this version again.
Compatibility of Backup Images
- An earlier version (4.5.x) is not upward compatible and does not support the use of backup image files created with this version (2016).
- This current version (2016) is downward compatible and supports the use of backup image files created with earlier versions except for 3.5 or earlier versions.
- This current version (2016) does not support the use of backup image files created with 3.5 or earlier versions.
Back to Table of Contents
Related documents can be found in [Documents]-[en_US] folder in the product's media.
Related Documents
- Index.html： Provides links to the related documents such as this Readme, Release Note, Technical Support, etc.
Basic Points
Backup and Restore
Backup
Restore
Offsite Replication
Mount / Unmount Image File
Others
Connect to Remote Computer
ActiveImage Boot Environment
Precautions for backup with Deduplication Compression option enabled in boot environment
Operation procedures using aipmng (CUI)
- Optical media such as CD-R/DVD-R and tape devices are not supported as the destination storage to directly save backup image files.
- Mount Image, Consolidate Image Files and Archive Backup Image Files features do not support images written on optical media such as CD-R/DVD-R.
- If [Temporary Change Tracking] option is selected by default for [Tracking Settings], the tracking information is purged whenever the computer is restarted. After rebooting system, the first scheduled backup is full backup instead of incremental, if this option is enabled. Thereafter, incremental backup files are created according to the specified schedule, associated to the firstly created full backup.
Before selecting [Persistent change tracking] option, please make sure that you have unmounted volume with sufficient available space.
- To add another volume as a tracking target, please add the entry of the volume to "/etc/fstab" and re-configure the settings for the program.
- The following three formats are supported for tracking target volumes of which entries are added to "/etc/fstab". If "auto" is selected for the file type of "fstab", the volume is not identified as tracking target volume. Please make sure the specific file type is entered.
- Block special file name
- UUID=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx
- LABEL=volume-label
- Differential backup schedule created with version 3.5 or an earlier version and [Do disk based backup] do not work with version 4.0 or later.
Since LVM backup has been changed with version 4.0, the backup schedule inherited from earlier version must be edited / updated or recreated.
- The use of "fdisk" command in ActiveImage Protector Linux Edition initializes the disks recognized as uninitialized at the following timings.
In the event that a connected disk is used as RAW device and unpartitioned, the data in the first sector may be changed as a result of initialization processing.
The disks as such need to be partitioned so that by allocating a partition to RAW device, you should be able to avoid data loss from the first sector.
- When "aipcontrol diskinfo" command is executed.
- When backup task is started.
- When Restore Image wizard is launched.
- When GUI is launched.
- Backup image cannot be restored to the disk of which sector size is different from backup source.
- If a lot of storage devices are connected to the system, start-up of ActiveImage console may take long.
- ActiveImage Protector supports up to the maximum number of 31 disks per system.
Up to the maximum number of 24 volumes per disk are supported.
- Before creating iso image of Boot Environment please make sure that "mkisofs" is configured in the system.
- When you select to display ActiveImage console in Japanese, the default font "IPA P Gothic" is selected.
If the settings are not configured in advance, please use ActiveImage console after you configure the settings
- AIP service runs using port 48236 and 48238. Please exclude those ports from using by other programs on the system.
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- In case working space for snapshot is not reserved during installation, please select [Preference] - [Snapshot] to reserve snapshot working space.
In the event that snapshot working space is not reserved, backup by taking a snapshot or Deduplication Compression feature may fail.
- AIP supports backup of the maximum size of 15TB volume.
For example, in case 20TB disk is partitioned into 10TB and 10TB volumes, both disk based and volume based backup are supported. However, in case that the 20TB disk is not partitioned, backup of 20TB disk is not supported.
- Since backup feature of this product uses loopback device provided by OS, you need to change the number of loopback devices according to the number of backup source volumes.
The number of loopback devices required for backup is the number of backup source volumes + 2.
If necessary, please change the number of loopback devices referring to the following.
For example, if you want to change the number of loopback devices to 16 when OS is booted up, please add the following command to "/etc/rc.local".
MAKEDEV -m 16 /dev/loop
- If the schedule is defined and applied within five minutes or less before the first scheduled start time, the first task will not be executed according to the schedule.
- If your machine is restarted while backup process is in progress, restart of the machine does not resume the aborted backup process. The same backup task needs to be executed again.
- In the event that the schedule settings are edited and the destination to save the image files is changed, the file names in the image file set created in the newly specified destination and the already existing image files saved in the previous destination may be duplicated.
The consistency and sequence of the created image files are guaranteed for image file set saved in a single destination.
- If a removable disk such as external USB HDD is specified as backup destination, please make sure you do not disconnect the removable disk while execution of the task is suspended.
The task resumed after reconnecting the USB HDD will fail.
- You are recommended to specify HDD other than backup source or a network shared location as the destination to save backup image files.
If you need to specify backup source HDD as the destination to save backup image files, you need to reserve working space for snapshot larger than the storage space for image files.
Also, task process time may take longer.
- In [Select Folder] page, you may not be allowed to log in shared folder on host which static IP address is allocated to.
If you encounter the problem, please specify IP address for the host.
- If a scheduled task does not start according to the schedule, the problem may be solved by restarting the service. Please copy the script [service_stop_start.sh] located under [utility] folder in the product media to a local folder and run the script from terminal.
# bash service_stop_start.sh
- Please note the following limitations if you directly specify a destination storage to save backup files over network.
- [Split image into xx MB files] option is not supported for Backup feature.
- If you select [FTP] protocol for the replication target, copying image files to FTP server does not normally complete.
- (6799) In case that device-based change tracking is selected, even when booted into the restored system, incremental backup image may be created in continuation with the associated backups. If you encounter this problem, please manually run full backup task so that incremental backup tasks may follow to run.
- (6056) "QuickP2V" option is valid with running Linux kernel only; not with all of kernels.
- When a backup image created for [LVM system] device type is selected as restore source, all of the image files created at the same time are selected.
- Restore of swap area by volume is not supported.
- Restore to Software RAID (mdraid) disk configured with mdadm by volume may fail.
In the event that you encounter this failure, please enter the following command to use aipmng (CUI) and try again.
# aipmng --restore
- The contents in the target disk in LVM system will be completely purged at the same time restore process is started.
If a target volume already exists, backup of the existing target should be created before executing restore processing.
- To restore and overwrite LV except for the rear most in VG where multiple LV's exist, the restored LV will be displayed at the end of the disk map after restore process is completed.
- Mounted volume, boot volume, PV, mdraid configured volume cannot be specified as restore target.
With ActiveImage console launched, if the volume mounted in local system is specified as restore target, please select [View] - [Refresh] after unmounting the volume in the system before executing restore process.
- When a volume is restored to overwrite an existing volume, [Target] indicates to be "unallocated space" in [Summary] page in restore wizard.
- Even when [Purge task log together] option is disabled, information displayed by selecting [Dashboard] - [Task Log] is purged.
- If you change [Port] in [Host settings for connection], connection with AIP agent may not be established.
If you experience this problem, please restart the system and try again.
- A restored partition may be indicated as [Unknown] in the disk map.
If you experience this problem, click on [Refresh] on the window.
- In [Restore Image Wizard], a backup image of Software RAID (mdraid) configured by using mdadm is indicated as Basic disk. This is just an indication error and the image, when restored, can be correctly recognized as Software RAID (mdraid).
- If a volume of tracking target is restored and overwritten, since the changes occurred as a result of restore process are identified as the changes, the size of the image file created by the first incremental backup is larger.
To avoid this problem, run a full backup task or run the following command to reboot the device of tracking target before the next incremental backup task is started.
After tracking is restarted, the first scheduled backup is a full backup instead of an incremental.
#/etc/aipsnap disable_tracker <Block Device Name>
#/etc/aipsnap enable_tracker <Block Device Name>
- Restore and overwrite to configured but unpartitioned volumes is not supported.
- Restore by volume does not support restore to logical volume.
- Please make sure the specified restore target has larger space than restore source before you start restoring a volume to available space.
- (6800) Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 or CentOS 7 on virtual machine restored from incremental image file created with device-based change tracking option enabled may fail to boot up. If you encounter this problem, please try it using full backup image.
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If you select WebDAV, FTP, SFTP for off-site replication target, only single-byte alphanumeric characters can be used to specify the path to the target location.
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When SFTP is selected for replication target, SSH server using SSH1 protocol for authentication is not supported.
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Replication to SFTP target takes longer than uploading through use of third party client tool.
-
Before selecting Amazon S3 for replication target, please make sure AWSCLI is configured on the system.
For more detailed information about AWSCLI configuration procedures, please visit Amazon Web Service.
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- In [Image Mount], file system of the following volumes is recognized as "Unknown".
- GPT Volume
- Volumes in the image file created with an earlier version of ActiveImage Protector.
- In the event that a part of backup image file which includes multiple volumes is mounted as read only, aix file cannot be created for other volumes mounted as writable.
- If you mount an image in the environment where mount driver is not properly applied, you get the message "[19] Unknown AIP error".
- Operation log in Image Explorer is not recorded in task log.
- In case that the image files in network folder which is not mounted on local system are consolidated, or in case that some data are deleted from an incremental image file which is included in an archived file, the archived image size is not decreased by the deleted data size but the size may grow up.
- When XFS volume in backup image is mounted, "Unknown AIP error" occurs.
- When the height of file information window is changed in Image Explorer by using mouse, "Details" and "Disk Map" buttons are hidden.
- Even when [Force unmount even if in use] option is enabled, the image file may not be properly unmounted.
- Mounting a differential image file (.aix) created to include changes made to an image file mounted as writable is not supported.
- If an incremental file in an image set is lost, you cannot use any image in the image set for operation.
- (6830) After you manually edited full backup image file, the associated incremental backup images may not be correctly identified.
- (8320) Don't perform the mount operation because mounting the image in the environment of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.x and CentOS 7.x makes it impossible to start the OS or it can't perform automatic mounting.
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- To copy files / folders in [Open Image File] or [Select Folder] dialog, please edit the extended attributes of the copy source such as permission, owner user / group, SELinux context, etc., accordingly.
- With ActiveImage console launched, the volume mounted in local system is indicated to be available for [Device for tracking] in [Tracking settings] in [Preference].
In the event that a volume is mounted after local system is booted up, please restart ActiveImage console.
- You cannot use "/" in [Create Support Info].
- If a comment is entered in Backup Wizard, line feeds may be inserted to the comment to be indicated in [Summary] page.
- ActiveImage Protector CLI menu cannot be called as a user belonging to Wheel group.
- In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 or CentOS 7 environment, GUI does not support Japanese to enter comment for backup operation, etc.
- For E-Mail notification, please make sure [Use this SMTP server] is enabled by selecting [Preference] - [Notification].
- In the event that a pile of task log records are stored, booting ActiveImage console may take longer.
- Can't change the backup summary option item "Auto-Detect alternative storage location".
- (6583) GUI is not supported to launch on virtual client machine in XEN virtual environment.
- (6368) Even when sufficient available space is not reserved for installation of the product, no alert message appears upon installation. Please make sure that there is sufficient available space before you start installation of the product.
- (6029) In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 or CentOS 7 environment, you will get StorageLibnary error message on SELinux. This message does not indicate any problem of ActiveImage Protector's behavior.
- (5944) If a disk that does not have a volume is configured as Physical Volume, you cannot obtain any information of Physical Volume.
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- Remote Connection to AIP agent of this current version (2016) only is supported.
- Remote Connection to an earlier version (4.5.x) of AIP is not supported.
- Remote Connection to AIP Windows edition is not supported.
- To connect to a remote host using ActiveImage console, the following settings need to be configured.
Remote Host (Managed)
Please make sure Windows Firewall (iptables) exception settings are configured to open the following TCP/UDP ports.
- TCP port 48236 (to connect to a remote computer)
- UDP port 48238 (to browse agents)
* For security purpose, you may open port 48236 only. However, please be aware of the following limitations.
The list of the host names on which AIP service is installed (since port 48238 is closed.)
ActiveImage console (Managing)
Select [Set firewall exception] option when installing the program, and settings are automatically configured to open the following UDP port.
- UDP port 48239 (to connect to a remote computer)
If [system-config-firewall] (firewall setting tool provided by GUI) is used, please manually configure the settings to open the ports.
To install Windows management console, the required settings must be configured by using the program's installer.
- In the event that remote host for connection target in different segment is not listed in [Computer List], you can enter IP address of the remote host for connection target.
To connect to remote host using net share command in Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Firewall may ask you for Netlogon Service permission.
- Sorting of IP addresses in remote connection window does not work properly.
- While the connection to a remote computer is live, you cannot mount aix image file created with a mounted incremental image file.
- While the connection to ActiveImage Boot Environment on remote computer is live, you cannot copy supportinfo on the console side. In addition, some menu items are disabled.
- Windows Manager console supports Windows 7 or later OS.
- (6821) Proxy server setting is not supported on Windows Manager console.
- (7988) In the event that Windows Manager console is uninstalled, the information of remote connection history or console settings is not migrated.
- When multiple schedules are created, only the schedules for the most immediate execution are listed.
- (7532) To select any host from the search result, please click on the host name. The checkboxes may be disabled even if you click on.
- In the event that the host name on Remote Host Management List is changed, please delete the host name from the list and add it to the list again.
- When adding host which booted ActiveImage Protector Boot Environment to the list, please enter "root" to user name/password.
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- While booting up ActiveImage Boot Environment in BIOS boot environment, key board operation may cause unnecessary control to be displayed and ActiveImage Boot Environment may not boot up.
If you experience this problem, press Enter key twice or more times to boot up ActiveImage Boot Environment.
- Japanese language input is not supported.
- Reference to help is not supported.
- When booting up generation 2 Hyper-V virtual machine, please make sure [Enable secure boot] option is disabled in Firmware settings for virtual machine.
- VolGroup in encrypted system environment is not properly recognized.
- When you select a file to restore or in Image Explorer, [Date Modified] is shown in UTC.
- VolGroup cannot be correctly recognized in the environment configured by Intel RAID. Also, backup image of LVM cannot be restored from GUI. To restore, please run the following command.
# /opt/NetJapan/aipcontrol restorelvm [Disk Image Name] [VolGroup Image Name] [IntelRAID Device Name]
- When you create ActiveImage Boot Environment by using GUI, only bootable USB memory is supported to create. If you need to write ActiveImage Boot Environment on optical media such as CD/DVD, please use [CD/DVD Creator] provided by the system.
- To build ActiveImage Boot Environment by using GUI, you need to have USB memory formatted with FAT 32. Before you start creating ActiveImage Boot Environment, please make sure that you have USB memory formatted with FAT 32.
- (6119) Recovery operation may cause GUI crash. If you encounter this problem, please restart GUI.
- "/tmp" is used as the temporary work folder for backup with Deduplication Compression option enabled in boot environment.
In the event that the size of duplicate data grows to exceed the space in "/tmp" folder, you can change the location of temporary work folder for backup with Deduplication Compression by taking the procedures of Step 2 [Select Destination] in Backup Wizard.
- [Continue operation without deduplication] option cannot be selected when [Deduplication Compression] is selected to back up in Boot Environment.
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Backup with Replication option enabled is not supported.
Also, creating backup schedule is not supported.
- A volume / LV may not be selected to restore to available space.
- In the event that you run "Restore a partition" to Software RAID (mdraid) volume configured with mdadm, you will get "-553 No open file" message.
Please run the following command to restore mdraid volume.
# aipcontrol restorevolume <image path> <md dev path>
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