Overview of Backups

Applies to: Nerdio Manager for MSP (NMM) v1.0+

Nerdio Manager's Backup module allows you to administer backups for all your critical AVD resources, including session hosts for personal and pooled desktops, desktop images, servers (virtual machines) and Azure Files shares.

Pre-requisite: Settings

Before Nerdio Manager can start protecting the resources, you must setup a few settings first.

Recovery Vaults

Navigate to Settings - Integrations and look for the tile "Backup recovery vaults, policies and assignments". You will be able to see vaults added and mapped to different regions like this:

Option A: Link to existing vault

If you have previously setup a Recovery Vault in Azure portal, you can link to the existing vault by clicking "Link vault". The pop-up will display a list of Azure Recovery Vaults in your Azure subscription. Select the vault you want to link to and click OK. Notice that you will be shown the Azure region where the vault is located.

Once you click OK and the task to link vault completes successfully, Nerdio Manager will be aware of the vault in Azure.

Option B: Add new vault

You can create a new Recovery Vault from Nerdio Manager by clicking the "Add vault" link. 

Enter name for vault, select the Resource group and Azure region where you would like the vault to be created and click Save. The system will validate the name you entered to make sure it follows Azure Recovery Vault naming requirements. A task will be initiated to create the vault. You can monitor progress from Settings - Tasks section, or you can navigate to the Logs module:

Policies

Once a vault is created, Nerdio Manager will create a backup policy by default, aptly called "DefaultPolicy" for that vault. For example, here's what the Settings tile looks like for a newly created vault called "SouthCentralVault01":

Click on the link "DefaultPolicy" to view how often and when the backups are run for items in the vault:

You can change the default settings and click Save. You can also delete the default policy and create your own policy by clicking the "Add policy" link. Follow prompts on-screen when adding a new policy.

Backups can be set to run hourly, in addition to daily, weekly and monthly. Nerdio Manager will create all new policies as Enhanced Policy to support the hourly backup option:

Older policies, that are not Enhanced policies, will not support the hourly option:

You must create a new policy in order to use the hourly option:

Note: The retention period depends on the frequency of backups. For daily/hourly backups, you need to select a value between 7-100  as the retention period. For weekly backups, select a value between 1-100  as the retention period.

Similarly, you can also create an Azure files policy with hourly frequency:

Assignments

Once you have setup a vault and it's backup policy, one last step is to assign policy to resources. Think of the vault as "where" - where do the backups go; the policy as "when" - when are the backups run; and assignment is final piece of the puzzle, the "what" - what is to be protected. This assignment must be done by Azure region as determined by the region you selected for vault when you first created the vault. For example, for the newly created vault in the South Central US region, we can tell that no resources are assigned to the vault & policy yet as the second column says "0 resources assigned":

Click "Assign policy to resources" link and select which resources in the Azure region should be backed up according to schedule set in policy:

Once you click Save, an hourly background process will automatically enable backup for resources according to the policy settings.

That completes the initial setup. Your session hosts, desktop images, servers and Azure Files shares are now ready to be backed up according to the settings you have specified.

Backups

Next, let's move to the Backups module which you can access from the Backup menu. When you first navigate to this screen, you will see a list of all resources that Nerdio Manager allows you to backup: session hosts, desktop images, servers and Azure Files shares.

Nerdio Manager automatically enables backups for resources according to the policy and assignments you created on the Settings > Integrations screen. For all other resources, you must enable backup by clicking "Enable backup" button. In the pop-up, select which policy you want to use to control the schedule and frequency for backups. The policies that are available in the dropdown will depend on the linked vaults and Azure region of the resource:

You can monitor progress of the task to enable backup from the Backup Tasks section:

Once backup has been enabled, that resource will be backed up according to the schedule in the policy you selected. Additionally, you will see new menu options in the action menu for that resource:

• Backup now: Initiate a backup of the resource
• Restore: Initiate a restore from a recovery point. Requires a successful backup first.
  Nerdio tip

  • Restoring from a backup restores the entire contents that were backed up. For example, if you are restoring a server, the entire VM will be restored. To restore individual files, refer to this KB.
• Disable backup: Stop protecting the resource. You can also choose to remove all previous backups, if any.

Search and filter

The search and filter area at the top of the screen allows you to narrow down and locate resources easily. The numbers next to each filter criteria checkboxes indicate results count. You can collapse the search & filter area by clicking the double-arrow icon in the upper right. This will hide the area and provide more room for the list area.