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    File Storage NAS:Back up and restore a General-purpose NAS file system across regions by using Cloud Backup

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    File Storage NAS:Back up and restore a General-purpose NAS file system across regions by using Cloud Backup

    Last Updated:Feb 28, 2025

    To prevent regional disasters from affecting business continuity, we recommend that you enable cross-region replication when you create a backup policy for your File Storage NAS (NAS) file system. Data in the backup vault is automatically replicated to the remote mirror vault. This way, you can back up data across regions.

    Prerequisites

    • Cloud Backup is activated. You are not charged for activating Cloud Backup. If you use the File Storage NAS backup feature of Cloud Backup, you are charged for the storage usage of backup vaults. For more information, see Overview.

    • A NAS file system is created. For more information, see Create a file system.

    Background information

    • The data of a NAS file system is stored in a single zone. Zone-redundancy and 3-zone deployment are not supported. If the region where your NAS file system is located faces downtime caused by force majeure factors such as natural disasters, system failures, and human errors, applications are unable to access data within a short period of time. To ensure business continuity, you can use Cloud Backup to back up your data across regions. Data can be quickly restored even if data in one region is inaccessible. For more information, see Cross-region backup.

    • A backup vault is a repository in which Cloud Backup stores backup data in the cloud. To implement disaster recovery, you can create a remote mirror vault for a backup vault and back up data from the backup vault to the mirror vault. For more information, see Terms.

    Billing

    Fees for cross-region backup

    You are charged for the storage capacity and cross-region replication traffic. For more information, see Fees for cross-region backup.

    Restoration fees

    You are not charged when you use a mirror vault to restore data to your NAS file system. For more information, see Restoration fees.

    Usage notes

    • The first time you create a backup plan or associate a backup plan with a backup policy, Cloud Backup automatically creates a service-linked role named AliyunServiceRoleForHbrNasBackup to obtain the permissions to access related resources. Follow the instructions in the console to complete authorization. For more information, see Service-linked roles for Cloud Backup.

    • In NAS backup and restoration, the maximum length of a file name is 248 bytes. If the length of a file name exceeds 248 bytes, the file fails to be backed up or restored and the backup or restore job is partially completed.

    • When you restore NAS files, you cannot restore socket files or hard links.

    • Cloud Backup does not support the access control list (ACL) feature of Server Message Block (SMB) file systems. If the ACL feature is enabled for your SMB file system, Cloud Backup cannot back up the ACL configurations. For more information, see Overview of the SMB ACL feature.

    Procedure

    Create a backup policy and enable cross-region replication

    1. Log on to the Cloud Backup console.

    2. In the left-side navigation pane, choose Backup > Policy Center.

    3. In the top navigation bar, select a region.

    4. On the Policy Center page, click Create Backup Policy.

    5. On the Create Backup Policy page, set Policy Type to General Backup Policy, turn on Replication to Other Region, and configure the Destination Region parameter. Then, click OK. For more information about the parameters, see Manage backup policies.

      image

    Create a backup plan

    Note

    • We recommend that you include no more than 50 million files in each NAS backup job and no more than 8 million files and subdirectories in each directory.

    • After you create a backup plan, the first backup job performs a full backup and subsequent backup jobs perform incremental backups.

    1. Log on to the NAS console.

    2. In the left-side navigation pane, choose Data Service > File Backup (Cloud Backup Service).

    3. In the top navigation bar, select a region.

    4. On the File Backup page, click the Backup Plans tab and click Create Backup Plan.

    5. In the Create Backup Plan panel, configure the following parameters to create a backup plan, and then click OK.

      Note

      • The first time you use Cloud Backup, you can apply for a 30-day free trial of backup plans. The free trial period starts from the day when a backup plan is created. Free backup plans do not support backup policies. You can use backup policies to create backup plans only in paid mode.

      • You cannot modify the source path and backup cycle of a free-trial backup plan. Each free-trial backup plan uses a separate backup vault. You cannot change the backup vault after you change a free-trial backup plan to a paid backup plan. If you plan to back up all your data to the same backup vault in the future, do not use a free-trial backup plan.

      1. Configure the basic parameters described in the following table.

        Parameter

        Description

        File System

        Select the NAS file system that you want to back up.

        Pay After Trial Ends

        Specify whether to pay for the backup plan after the free trial ends.

      2. Click Switch to Paid Plan and configure the parameters described in the following table.

        image

        Parameter

        Description

        Source Paths

        Enter a file path, for example, /nas/folder.

        Backup Rule

        Configure a backup rule based on the files that you want to back up. Only files that match the specified rule are backed up.

        • Include All Files: All files are backed up.

        • Include Files or Exclude Files: If you select Include Files, enter the paths to the files that you want to back up. If you select Exclude Files, enter the paths to the files that you do not want to back up.

        Backup Policy

        Select the created backup policy from the drop-down list.

        For more information about the parameters in a backup policy, see Manage backup policies.

    View the backup data

    Log on to the Cloud Backup console. In the top navigation bar, select the remote region. In the left-side navigation pane, click Storage Vaults. On the Storage Vaults page, view the data synchronization progress. After the data synchronization is complete, the data is backed up to the remote region.

    Restore a NAS file system in a remote region

    You can restore data from a remote mirror vault to a NAS file system. Perform the following steps:

    Step 1: Prepare a NAS file system

    • Prepare a NAS file system used for data restoration. For more information about how to create a NAS file system, see Create a file system.

    • The region of the NAS file system must be the same as that of the mirror vault.

    Step 2: Create a restore job

    To restore a NAS file system across regions, perform the following steps:

    Important

    When you create a restore job, select the created mirror vault as the source vault, and select the NAS file system prepared in Step 1 as the object to be restored. Make sure that other settings are the same as the settings that you configured when you created the backup job. After the restore job is completed, data is restored to the data source in the region where the mirror vault resides.

    1. Log on to the NAS console.

    2. In the left-side navigation pane, choose Data Service > File Backup (Cloud Backup Service).

    3. In the top navigation bar, select the region where the mirror vault resides.

    4. On the File Backup page, click the Restore Jobs tab, and then click Create Restore Job.

    5. In the Create Restore Job panel, perform the following steps.

      1. In the Select Backup step, configure the parameters and click Next.

        You must select the mirror vault from the Source Vault drop-down list. The name of a mirror vault is prefixed by copy. When you configure other parameters, you can follow the requirements for the parameters that you configured for the Backup Vault in the Create a restore job for a single NAS file system in the same region step.

        image

      2. In the Select Restore Items step, configure the Restore Items parameter and click Next.

        Parameter

        Description

        Restore Items

        Select the files or directories that you want to restore. Valid values:

        • Include All Files: Cloud Backup restores all backup files from the source NAS file system.

        • Include Files: Select the files or folders that you want to restore. You can also click Enter Paths to specify the files that you want to restore.

        • Exclude Files: Select the files or folders that you do not want to restore. You can also click Enter Paths to specify the files that you do not want to restore.

        Enter one path in each line and make sure that each path starts with the lowest-level directory in the source path. For example, to restore the file.txt file and the abc folder in the /test/data directory, enter the following paths: 

        /data/file.txt
/data/abc

      3. In the Restore Destination step, select a File System in the specified region and click Next.

      4. In the Destination Path step, specify the recovery path and click Create.

        Parameter

        Description

        Restore Path Type

        Select the type of the recovery path.

        • Specify Path: Specify a new path and restore the file system to the path.

        • Origin Path: Restore the file system to the original path.

        Destination Path

        This parameter is required only if you set the Restore Path Type parameter to Specify Path. This parameter specifies the path to which the file system is restored. For example, you can restore the file system to /nas/abc.

        File Conflict Policy

        • Skip This File

        • Overwrite The File

        • Keep Latest File

        Virus Detection During Restoration

        If you turn on this switch, Cloud Backup performs virus detection on all files to be restored before data restoration. The console provides the detailed information about this feature. For more information, see Backup point virus detection.

        When Recovery Items Contain Detected Viruses

        • Do not restore the virus-infected files (You can find secure versions on the Virus Detection tab.)

        • I am aware of the risks and still want to restore all the selected items

      After the restore job is created, you can view the progress of the restore job in the Status column on the Restore Jobs tab.

    6. After the restore job is completed, mount the restored NAS file system and verify the data integrity. For more information about how to mount a NAS file system, see Scenarios.

    What to do next

    • If you want to restore backup data to another region, repeat the preceding procedure. On the Policy Center page, select the destination region to which you want to restore data.

    • If you do not use Cloud Backup to back up and restore data to a NAS file system across regions, you can migrate data between NAS file systems by using Data Online Migration. For more information, see Migrate data by using Data Online Migration.

    References

    • For more information about how to back up an Extreme NAS file system, see Back up an Extreme NAS file system.

    • For more information about how to back up the data of an Extreme NAS file system at a specific point in time, see Manage snapshots.

    • To prevent accidental deletion of files from your General-purpose NAS file system, we recommend that you enable the recycle bin feature after you restore data. For more information, see Recycle bin.