External Storage Backup & Restore of Flowmon Profiles

A profile in context of Flowmon is a specific view on flow data stored in Flowmon Collector. It is defined by name, type, combination of profile filters and for a continuous type of the profile also size of allocated quota. Exceeding the quota causes an expiration of the oldest data, which is overwritten. A new feature allows to backup the profiles to defined external storage and restore them vice-versa whenever needed.

Profiles in Flowmon Monitoring Center provide a specific view on the flow data. Thanks to the profiles, data is promptly ready to visualize and further analysis and drill-down. Some profiles, so-called “continuous” are not defined and limited to time interval. They store data continuously until the allocated quota is exceeded. Then is the oldest data rewritten and definitely lost. To avoid data loss has Flowmon new feature for profiles backup to remote storage based on CIFS/Samba.

Configuration and management of profile backup is very easy. Settings could be done per profile or group of profiles. To enable this backup&restore feature, it is necessary to configure the external storage in Flowmon Configuration Center.

Figure: External Data Storage Settings

After external storage configuration, the profile backup option appears in Profile settings. The backup is performed on daily basis, when all the data from previous day is copied to defined external storage. In case of backup process failure, the data remains in queue and Flowmon attempts to copy them the next day. Moreover, multiple Flowmon devices can backup data to the same external storage. The data is marked with appliance ID to keep the track for future restore. Data can be restored for given profile, interval or Flowmon appliance. So that is also possible to restore backup created by one Flowmon appliance on a different Flowmon appliance.

Figure: Edit Profile

The backuped data could be restored for selected profile, source device and time interval. Data is restored in the form of history profile with user-defined name and group.

Figure: Restore from backup

This useful feature is available since Flowmon 7.05.02. All Flowmoners can now sleep better knowing the data can be easily restored in case of unexpected damage or disaster.

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