Centralized vaults

A centralized vault is a networked location allotted by the management server administrator to serve as storage for the backup archives. A centralized vault can be managed by a storage node or be unmanaged. The total number and size of archives stored in a centralized vault is limited by the storage size only.

As soon as the management server administrator commits to creating a centralized vault, the vault path and name are distributed to all machines registered on the server. The shortcut to the vault appears on the machines in the Vaults > Centralized group. Any backup plan existing on the machines, including local plans, can use the centralized vault.

On a machine that is not registered on the management server, a user having the privilege to back up to the centralized vault can do so by specifying the full path to the vault. If the vault is managed, the user’s archives, as well as other archives stored in the vault, will be managed by the storage node.

  Managed vaults  

The managed vault is a centralized vault managed by a storage node. The storage node performs storage node-side cleanup and storage node-side validation for each archive stored in the managed vault. When creating a managed vault, an administrator can specify additional operations that the storage node will perform (deduplication, encryption). Management operations cannot be canceled or disabled. They will be performed for all archives stored in the vault unless the vault is deleted.

Any managed vault is self-contained, that is, contains all metadata the storage node needs to manage the vault. In case the storage node is lost or its database is corrupted, the new storage node retrieves the metadata and re-creates the database. When the vault is attached to another storage node, the same procedure takes place.

Accessing managed vaults

To be able to back up to a managed vault, a user must have an account on the machine where the storage node is installed. The scope of a user’s privileges in a vault depends on the user’s rights on the storage node. A user who is a member of the Users group can view and manage his/her own archives. Members of the Administrators group can view and manage any archive stored on the storage node. A user who is a member of the Administrators group on a managed machine can view and manage archives created by any user of this machine.

To learn more about privileges depending on the user rights, see the User privileges on a storage node section.

  Unmanaged vaults  

An unmanaged vault is a centralized vault that is not managed by a storage node. To access an unmanaged vault, a user has to have access privileges for the location from the network.

Any user that has permission to read/write files in an unmanaged vault can:

  • back up data to the unmanaged vault
  • recover data from any backup located in the unmanaged vault.
  • view and manage all the archives located in the unmanaged vault.

Related sections

Working with the “Centralized vault” view

Actions on centralized vaults

Operations with archives stored in a vault

Operations with backups

Filtering and sorting archives

Tape libraries

Centralized vaults