NovaStor DataCenter FAQs
This FAQ was specifically written for DataCenter 5.x. The majority of the information here does carry over to newer versions however.
Q: Which data transfer types are supported by NovaStor DataCenter?
A:
Currently supported types are:
D2D (disk to disk), D2T (disk to tape), D2D2D (disk to disk with clone to disk) and D2D2T(disk to disk with clone to tape).
Q: Which kind of tape libraries are supported by NovaStor DataCenter?
A:
Supported are all kinds of physical and virtual tape libraries attached by SCSI or SAN.
The only requirement is that the tape library device driver must understand SCSI 2/3 commands.
Q: Which types of tapedrives are supported by NovaStor DataCenter?
A:
Supported are all kinds of LTO (HP, IBM, Quantum), IBM TS drives, SUN T10K drives attached via SATA, SCSI and SAN.
Q: Which kind of disk devices are supported as backup source and backup target?
A:
Supported are all kinds of direct attached (IDE, SATA, USB, SCSI) disks, NAS and SAN attached disks or disk RAID arrays.
Q: Can I use a separate LAN interface for my backups?
A:
Yes, certainly. By defining an alias (the Name or IP to be used) for the backup server, you can use that alias in the backup job definition.
Q: Can you recover single files from VM backups?
A:
Yes, as of version 5.2 you can recover single files directly from a VMware VM backup. Prerequisites for this are valid VMware backup made to a GIR (Granular Item Recovery) pool. The single file restore doesn't work for Hyper-V yet, though this is destined to be available soon. You can however restore the Hyper-V VM backup to an alternate location, then mount the restored vhd(x) disk to be browsed for file(s) needed.
Q: What is a GIR pool and what is the difference to a disk pool?
A:
GIR pools are solely for VM backups. GIR pools maintain their own backup generations and schemes.
Regular disk pools on the other hand can contain any type of backup and are totally content- and scheme-unaware when it comes to maintaining their retention times.
You can backup VMs to GIR and regular disk pools, but you can backup files and other backup types only to regular disk pools.
Q: Can you recover single MS-Exchange items like mails or mailboxes?
A:
Yes, for MS-Exchange 2010 and above we support single mail recovery with a single mail item recovery agent.
Q: Can I run a NovaStor DataCenter graphical user interface (GUI) standalone?
A:
Yes. Use the GUI installer executable to install the GUI component. The GUI runs on any supported platform without any other requirements.
Q: VSS Snapshots
A: Snapshots are stored on the designated volume via the VSS.
The space available for this purpose is configured separately.
If there is not enough space left, Windows will delete the page if you want to take another snapshot.
This happens in the middle of the backup.
Please check in the Windows Explorer context menu Shadow Copies Configure-> Properties for Shadow Copies
disk space released on the appropriate volume and increase it to 10% of the volume capacity if necessary.
In addition, create on C: Place, because there are usually the snapshots filed.
Please proceed as follows to also remove all snapshots generated by NovaStor DataCenter and thus clear the sysvol.
Open a cmd.exe as admin and change to the directory
C: \ program files \ novastor \ datacenter \ hiback \ vss
Run the command there
vssdba.exe -delete *
off if no backup is currently active on the system.