System Requirements for Protecting AWS Outposts with Commvault

Review the system requirements for protecting AWS Outposts with Commvault.

Access Nodes

Placement of Access Nodes

• For optimal performance, protection of Amazon EC2 and Amazon RDS instances using snapshots requires access nodes that are within the AWS region (public cloud).

• Protection of Amazon RDS instances (dump/export) and Amazon EKS instances requires at least one access node to be located within the AWS Outposts.

Operating System

Linux

You can configure an access node on a Linux instance using one of the following methods:

• Deploy an AWS Marketplace AMI.

  From AWS Marketplace AMI, you can deploy the Commvault Cloud Access Node BYOL to serve as a Linux access node and as a File Recovery Enabler for Linux. This AMI contains all of the components that are required to support Linux operations in the Commvault environment. For more information, see Deploying a Commvault Linux MediaAgent from AWS.

• Use one of the following Linux distributions:

  • Amazon Linux 2 (preferred)

  • RHEL 8.5, 8.3, 8.2, 8.1, 8.0, 7.9, 7.8, 7.7, 7.6, 7.5, 7.4

    Note

    For RHEL 8 instances, to install operating system packages that must enable automatic installation of Mono, register the instances with Red Hat.

• Configure an Amazon Linux instance that uses a 64-bit ARM processor with the required software.

  When you use an AWS instance with the 64-bit ARM processor as a Linux access node for VSA, you can back up instances or restore full instances, but you cannot restore guest files.

The following features are not supported when using a Linux access node. Use a Windows access node for these operations.

• Full instance restores (import method)

• Conversion from another hypervisor to Amazon EC2 (import method)

• Conversion from another hypervisor to Amazon EC2 (import method) is not supported when using a Linux access node to convert a Windows guest VM

• Live sync replication (import method)

For cross-hypervisor restores or replication from VMware to Amazon, you can use an access node that runs on Windows or Linux. If you use an access node that runs on Linux, for both Windows and Linux guest VMs, the drivers must be installed on the source before performing the backup. Otherwise, the replication operation fails. You cannot use a Linux access node for the import method.

Windows

All Windows-compatible processors are supported.

• Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Editions

• Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Editions

• Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Editions

Hardware

Processor Architecture

The following processor architectures are supported:

• x64 (Linux, Windows)

• ARM

Placement of Cloud Libraries

All AWS Outposts-hosted EBS and RDS snapshots are stored within the AWS region, per AWS Outposts.

Supported Countries

You can deploy Commvault in all countries that are supported by AWS Outposts. For more information about the countries supported by AWS Outposts, go to AWS Outposts FAQs on the AWS Outposts documentation site.

Currently, Commvault supports the following AWS Outposts countries:

• North America: US, Canada, Mexico

• EMEA: All EU countries, Switzerland, Norway, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), Israel, South Africa

• APAC: Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, India

• South America: Brazil

Supported Regions

You can deploy Commvault in all regions supported by AWS Outposts. For more information about the regions supported by AWS Outposts, go to AWS Outposts FAQs on the AWS Outposts documentation site.

Currently, Commvault supports the following AWS Outposts regions:

• US East (Ohio) , us-east-2

• US East (N. Virginia), us-east-1

• US West (N. California), us-west-1

• US West (Oregon), us-west-2

• Canada (Central), ca-central-1

• South America (São Paulo), sa-east-1

• EU (Frankfurt), eu-central-1

• EU (Ireland), eu-west-1

• EU (Stockholm), eu-north-1

• EU (Paris), eu-west-3

• EU (London), eu-west-2

• EU (Milan), eu-south-1

• Middle East (Bahrain), me-south-1

• Africa (Cape Town), af-south-1

• Asia Pacific (Sydney), ap-southeast-2

• Asia Pacific (Tokyo), ap-northeast-1

• Asia Pacific (Seoul), ap-northeast-2

• Asia Pacific (Singapore), ap-southest-1

• Asia Pacific (Hong Kong), ap-east-1

• Asia Pacific (Mumbai), ap-south-1

• AWS GovCloud (US-West), us-gov-west-1

• AWS GovCloud (US-East), us-gov-east-1

Considerations

• Commvault software uses ec2:CreateImage to create Amazon EC2 backups as an Amazon Machine Image (AMI). AWS Outposts does not support ec2:CreateImage, so Amazon EC2 AMIs and associated Amazon EBS volume snapshots are stored in the parent region instead of on the Outposts Rack or Server.

  • EBS-based snapshot protection of EC2 and RDS instances must occur within the AWS region for optimal read throughput from EBS snapshots.

• Data residency:

  • Localized backups can be retained on the AWS Outposts (Rack, 1RU servers, and 2RU servers) by creating Amazon EBS volumes as Commvault Disk Libraries or Amazon S3 on Outposts buckets as Commvault Cloud Libraries.

  • Commvault backup plans ensure your data residency requirements by writing the backup data only to where you require it (with or without encryption).

  • Commvault can be directed to write to local storage devices outside your AWS Outposts via an Amazon Local Gateway (LGW), if required.

  • Commvault supports a broad array of backup destinations from cloud/object storage, HyperScale storage, Disk Storage, and tape.