Alike Admin Guide (v4)

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Alike Components


Web-Based UI

Alike’s mobile-friendly, web-based user interface makes it easy to manage your backup, replication, and recovery jobs from a single console. Alike v4 online management console may be accessed locally, or remotely from any computer or mobile device on one of the following browsers:

  • Google Chrome
  • Mozilla Firefox
  • Safari
  • Opera

You may access the Admin Console at: http://localhost:8080 directly from the Alike Server. You may also remotely access the console by visiting the IP or URL of your Alike install server. Please be sure that any firewall software running on the Alike Server allows access to the TCP ports you choose for your management port (8080 by default).

The Alike Admin Console is how you configure, manage, and review your Alike backups and history. Keep in mind that 100% of your administrative tasks can be performed from this console, from the browser of your choice.

Please note: the Alike Management Console runs from the DataVaulter service on your Alike server, so it must be running in order to access your Admin Console.

You can also watch this brief video to get an overview of Alike’s mobile-friendly, web-based user interface and see how easy it is to manage your backup, replication, and recovery jobs from a single console.

Once you are familiar with Alike’s UI, you can now manage the following Alike Components:


Alike Data Store (ADS)


The Alike Data Store (ADS) holds all of Alike’s critical deduplicated backup data. As such, it will require sufficient storage space to hold all the desired backup versions. The ADS can be located on any CIFS compliant storage.

If desired, the ADS can even be shared locally from a path on the Alike Server itself (where the services reside). Often, however, it is preferable to locate the ADS directly on a NAS or storage server for performance and fault tolerance purposes.

Performance note: For Q-Hybrid backups, and all Hyper-V jobs, Alike can take advantage of newer versions of the SMB protocol (2,2.1,3.0 & 3,.02), if the ADS can support it. In some cases, newer SMB versions can significantly improve backup performance.

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Alike Backup Delegate (ABD)


Applies to XenServer Environments Only

The ABD (Alike Backup Delegate) is only required on XenServer platforms, and provides the “Enhanced” backup/replication features, as well as restore operations. ABDs run as tiny virtual appliances, and are dynamically provisioned by Alike from a template only when needed.

ABDs are disposed of when their work is complete. The ABD template is a tiny (~128MB) virtual appliance image that Alike deploys and manages in your XenServer pool.

In XenServer pooled environments, the ABD template must reside on shared storage, which must be accessible by all hosts in a resource pool. For environments with multiple pools, one template image must be deployed to the shared storage of each pool. In single XenServer host environments, you may deploy your ABD image to local storage.

Alike will automatically deploy your ABD templates during the initial installation wizard. However, when introducing new Xen pools to Alike, you may need to ask Alike to deploy a new template. Alike will automatically select the best SR for your ABD template.

If for some reason you wish to store your ABD template on a different SR, you may simply migrate the ABD template in XenCenter, and Alike will automatically detect its new location.

By default, Alike will utilize DHCP to assigned IP addresses to your ABDs as needed. However, if no DHCP is available, or you wish to specify your IPs/VLANs, that can be set in the Alike Manager, under Tools->Manage ABDs, then select Add/Edit IPs in the proper system’s sub menu.

manage-abd-add-edit-ips

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Alike Services


Alike runs via two Windows services:

  1. BackupScheduler
  2. DataVaulter

BackupScheduler: The Backup Scheduler service is the main service of Alike. It manages all job scheduling and execution, data retention and validation, email notification, and other critical functions. It must always run under a privileged (usually the administrator) account, and has a constant connection to the ADS share.

The Backup Scheduler service will consume far more resources (RAM, CPU,  Disk & Network I/O) than any other component on the Alike server. The log file for the Backup Scheduler service is aptly named AlikeScheduler.log, and can be found in the Alike installation folder, under the logs directory.

DataVaulter: The DataVaulter service, or NimbusVaulter, has a bit of a misleading name. While originally it shouldered some of the Offsite Vaulting workload, it is now solely responsible for the Alike Web Services, which power the Alike Manager UI (browser app).

It works closely with the Backup Scheduler service, but can be started/stopped independently, and NOT affect the currently running jobs. It must be running in order to access the Alike Manager, and is therefore critical for managing your Alike system.

For troubleshooting, its logfile is named  AlikeVaulter.log and can be found in the same logs directory of the Alike installation path.

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