Settings

Manage configuration settings for the Operations Center.

General page

The following settings are available on the page:

Retention

You can change the following settings:

Status

Set the collection interval for the status information that is shown in the Operations Center.

Tip: A lower interval uses more space in the server database, and can also require more processor and disk resources. For example, decreasing the interval by half doubles the required database and archive log space.

A higher interval reduces the currency of Operations Center data, but might be preferred in a high-latency network configuration.

Status is determined by a set of monitoring thresholds that are defined on the IBM Spectrum Protect server.

You can create new monitoring thresholds or change the default thresholds. To configure monitoring thresholds, use the UPDATE STATUSTHRESHOLD command and related commands.

Alerts

Specify how to manage alerts that are not manually deactivated or closed.

An alert represents an error message that is issued by the IBM Spectrum Protect server. Alerts are shown in the Operations Center and can be sent as email notifications.

You can add or remove alerts from the Configure Alerts page (Overviews > Alerts > Configure).

To configure most email settings for alerts, use the SET ALERTEMAIL command and related commands. You can also add or remove email recipients from the Configure Alerts page.

When an alert is first issued, it is active. You can set the following time intervals to manage the alert lifecycle:

Alerts stay active

Specifies how long an alert remains active before being moved to the inactive state, if an administrator does not deactivate or close the alert.

Alerts stay inactive

Specifies how long an alert remains inactive before being closed, if the alert condition does not recur and an administrator does not close the alert.

Closed alerts are retained

Specifies how long closed alerts are retained before being automatically deleted.

Integration Services

Enabling this feature allows applications that use Representational State Transfer (REST) services to query and manage the storage environment by sending calls to the following address:

https://oc_host_name:port/oc/api

where oc_host_name is the network name or IP address of the Operations Center host system and port is the Operations Center port number. The default port number is 11090.

For more information about the REST services that are available for the Operations Center, issue the following REST call:

https://oc_host_name:port/oc/api/help

Security Notifications

When this feature is enabled, the Operations Center displays a notification message if it detects signs of ransomware infection in client backup data. This detection is based on the fact that a ransomware attack typically creates encrypted copies of many client files. The Operations Center examines backup statistics for the following indicative changes to the backup workload and data deduplication rate:

• A significant increase in the workload, which might indicate that ransomware encrypted many files on the client.
• A significant decrease in deduplication savings, which might indicate a ransomware attack because encrypted files are not deduplicated.

A security notification can show only that significant changes in the workload or data deduplication rate were observed in the most recent client backup session as compared to recent history. The Operations Center cannot determine the causes of significant changes in the backup data, so a security notification does not necessarily mean that the client is infected. Security notifications are issued in the Operations Center so that you can investigate further, and determine why the statistical anomaly occurred.

At Risk Indication

A client is considered to be at risk if a problem occurs during its most recent scheduled backup, or during a backup that starts within the time interval that you specify.

The term backup also includes archive operations for IBM Spectrum Protect for Enterprise Resource Planning clients.

The default "at risk" time intervals are specified when you initially configure the Operations Center.

The following types of clients are shown in the Operations Center:

Applications

The following clients are application clients:

• IBM Spectrum Protect for Enterprise Resource Planning
• IBM Spectrum Protect Snapshot
• IBM Spectrum Protect for Databases
• IBM Spectrum Protect for Mail
• IBM Spectrum Protect for Virtual Environments (except for VMware vSphere clients, which are classified as system clients)

A virtual machine that is backed up by using application client software that is installed on the virtual machine itself is also classified as an application client.

Virtual Machines

A virtual machine is the individual guest host within a hypervisor. Each virtual machine is represented as an IBM Spectrum Protect file space.

To be classified as a virtual machine, a client must meet the following requirements:

• The client is not registered to an IBM Spectrum Protect server as a client node
• The client is backed up by an IBM Spectrum Protect client node that is installed outside of the virtual machine
  Tip: This separately-installed client node, called a data center node, is classified as an application client, even if it is technically a system client.

Systems

Backup-archive and API clients are classified as system clients.

System clients also include the following items:

• An IBM Spectrum Protect source server in a server-to-server virtual volume configuration
• A virtual machine that is backed up by using backup-archive client software that is installed on the virtual machine itself
• VMware vSphere clients

Object Clients

An object client is an application that accesses the server by making S3 requests to store and retrieve objects. A software agent, called the object agent, receives the S3 requests from the object client and communicates with the server to complete the request. IBM Spectrum Protect Plus is the only exploiter of this client type. All object clients represent an IBM Spectrum Protect Plus server.

Updates

Specify where to store software installation packages for backup-archive client updates and how many packages to retain. The directory location that you specify is also used to store installation files that are imported from the update packages.

The number of packages that you choose to retain applies for each installed product version. If multiple versions are installed, ensure that enough space is available to store the specified number of packages. A minimum of 40 GB of free space is required.

On the Backup-Archive Client Updates page, the number of updates for each product version is limited by the package retention setting. The number of updates also depends on how many major releases are listed in the catalog file that is used for automatic client deployment operations.

To schedule client updates through the Operations Center, you must configure your environment to meet the following requirements:

Server requirements

IBM Spectrum Protect servers must meet the following requirements:

• Hub and spoke servers must be running IBM Spectrum Protect V8.1.3 or later.
• Hub and spoke servers must have a high-level address and low-level address specified. You can configure these settings by using the SET SERVERHLADDRESS and SET SERVERLLADDRESS commands.
• The hub server must have a server password specified. You can configure this setting by using the SET SERVERPASSWORD command.
• The hub server must be defined to the spoke servers, and the certificate of the hub server must be added to the truststore file of each spoke server. You can manually exchange certificates between the hub and the spoke servers. For more information, see Securing communication between the hub server and a spoke server in the IBM Spectrum Protect documentation.
• The port that is specified by the RESTHTTPSPORT server option must be open to allow secure communication between the Operations Center and the hub server. The default port number is 8443.
• Spoke servers must have a directory-container storage pool or FILE storage pool available to store update packages. The Operations Center automatically selects a storage pool to use.

For more information about using IBM Spectrum Protect commands, see the IBM Spectrum Protect documentation.

Client requirements

IBM Spectrum Protect backup-archive clients that you plan to update through the Operations Center must meet the following requirements:

• The passwordaccess option must be set to generate.
• The autodeploy client option must be set to a value other than no. For more information about this option, see Autodeploy.
• 32-bit backup-archive clients are not supported. If a 32-bit backup-archive client is detected on a 64-bit operating system, it is upgraded to the 64-bit version.
• The client scheduler must be running.
• The client system must be running and the client must have connected to the IBM Spectrum Protect server at least once.

Microsoft Windows clients must meet the following additional requirements:

• The client scheduler must be started as a Windows service and not from the command line. To minimize the chance of a restart, the scheduler service is shut down before the new client is installed, and restarted after the installation. If the scheduler is not run as a Windows service, a restart is required when the client is updated.
• The command-line version of the Windows registry utility (reg.exe) is required. This tool is generally installed as part of the operating system installation on supported Windows operating systems.

Tip: Changing the location for storing update packages does not affect the Operations Center. Previously downloaded packages are deleted automatically. Server volumes are deleted as data is pruned or expired. Do not manually delete files with a .bfs extension.

For more information about using IBM Spectrum Protect commands, see the IBM Spectrum Protect documentation.