SUMMARY
Requirements for connecting the Unitrends Disk Archiving Unit (RXDA Recovery Archive) to a Unitrends Enterprise Backup appliance.
ISSUE
The Unitrends Disk Archiving Unit (previously known as the Unitrends RXDA) is a 1U, rack-mountable device designed to provide a spannable, hot swappable architecture for archival purposes that supports archive sets spanning from 1 to 4 drives at a time.
The unit connects to your Unitrends Recovery-Series physical appliance or Unitrends Backup appliances deployed to VMWare 5.1+ using attached storage device via an eSATA cable. Certain parts are required to utilize this device with our Unitrends Enterprise Backup Product, as outlined below.
For a list of all Cold Copy supported modes by appliance type, see Supported Cold Backup Copy Modes by Appliance Platform
RESOLUTION
RXDA units can be connected to Unitrends full depth Rack Mount appliances equipped with either 4 SATA ports or 1 SAS port via included cables. Units that have USB-only connections and lack card expansion bays (half rack units and some desktop units) are not compatible with RXDA.
If you have lost your original cables you may contact your sales rep to acquire replacements for the SAS to eSATA or follow the links below. For eSATA cables, the following cable parts are supproted:
ESAC01 KINGWIN 1 METER ESATA CABLE - ESATA TO ESATA 26AWG BLK (Style20276, E162747)
ESATA6 STAR TECH 2 METER ESATA CABLE - ESATA TO ESATA 26AWG BLK (Style2725, E74020-C)
Generation 7 model 814S-XXX and 818S-XXX sold after June 2017 do not come equipped with a SAS connection by default. The required card kit to support an RXDA on these units may be acquired new via your reseller. The use of 3rd party cards or the movement of cards between different appliances can result in the appliance warranty rendered void.
To complete the connection between the Disk Archiving Unit and Unitrends Backup on VMWare, the following parts are required:
NOTES
Unitrends half-rack appliances (6XX-XXX series) as well as some older desktop class appliances do not come with this connection and do not have slots to add in cards and are thus not compatible with the RXDA. If you are currently using an RXDA compatible appliance and are upgrading to a newer unit, single-disk archives can be read on new appliances using USB single-drive docks, however to support multi-drive archives prior created you will need to acquire an 8XXS-XXX series appliance or larger to continue RXDA compatibility.
Cables from 3rd party shold be compatible with unitrends products, but are not certified. For ensured compatibility, please acquire your parts from an authorized reseller.
For more information about how to use the Disk Archiving Unit with Unitrends Enterprise Backup, see the Disk Archiving Unit chapter in the Unitrends Administrator's Guide - Legacy Interface.
Only Unitrends provided single bay docking stations or RXDA appliances are supported for rotational disk use, and only when leveraging unitrends certified disk models. Never use "green" drives or 3rd party USB devices with a unitrends appliance. Doing so can easily cause hardware or kernel crash issues that may result in complete data loss.