PowerFlex 4.0 Administration Flashcards
How is storage organized on PowerFlex?
organized into a storage pool which resides in a protection domain
What does a protection domain provide?
data isolation ,security, performance
an SDS and storage pool participate in one protection domain at a time
What is inside of protection domains?
contain SDSs that are configured as a separate logical group
What is the function of a logical group?
to physically isolate specific data into a dataset
What is the benefit of a logical group?
isolation of the dataset provides a performance increase for the member SDSs (tenants) and limits effects of node device failure
How does a write operation work on PowerFlex?
data is mirrored onto two separate SDSs within a protection domain
What are the benefits of protection domains?
protection against simultaneous failures
performance isolation
data location control
network constraints
How do protection domains protect against simultaneous failures?
IO is unaffected when a server or media fails
How do protection domains give performance isolation?
ability to establish SLA tiers by separating volumes for performance planning
How do protection domains give data location control?
protection domain SDS has efficient and secure data transfer
How do protection domains provide network constraints?
spread out workloads evenly on VLANs
What can also be included in protection domains besides storage pools and SDSs?
SDTs
SDR
Acceleration Pools
Fault Sets
What is the relationship between Protection Domains and PowerFlex Manager?
can add, modify, activate, inactivate, or remove protection domains from PF Manager
What can be done once a protection domain is created?
admin can add SDSs, fault sets, storage pools, and acceleration pools
can also set up replication
What are the two options to modify a protection domain?
rename
network throttling
What is the rename operation for a protection domain?
change the name of the protection domain
What is the network throttling operation for a protection domain?
used to limit the available bandwidth for backend data transfers
configured separately for each protection domain
What happens when a protection domain is created?
is automatically activated
admin can inactivate a protection domain at any time
What happens when a protection domain is inactivated?
data remains on SDSs and allows users to conduct graceful system shutdown
user can than conduct any maintenance activities on protection domain
when maintenance complete protection domain reactivated and SDSs made available again
When should you remove a protection domain?
only if a user no longer needs it
ensure that all SDSs, storage pools, acceleration pools, and fault sets have been removed from protection domain
What are fault sets?
logical entities that contain a group of SDSs within a protection domain
How are fault sets defined?
defined for a set of servers that are likely to fail together (ex: an entire rack of servers)
What are the rules for fault sets?
PowerFlex requires a minimum of 3 fault sets per protection domain
at least two nodes in each fault set
What is a fault unit?
refers to either a single fault set or an SDS not associated with a fault set
What is best practice for fault sets on PowerFlex?
have two nodes in each fault set for high availability and fault tolerance
actual number of nodes in fault set can be adjusted according to specific requirements and desired redundancy level
What is important to know about configuring fault sets?
can only create/configure them before adding SDSs to the system
configuring fault sets incorrectly may prevent the creation of volumes
SDS can be added to fault set only during the creation of the SDS
can add fault sets when adding SDS nodes after initial installation
How do fault sets provide data resiliency?
maintains a copy of all data chunks within the fault set on SDSs outside of itself
ensures another copy of data is always available even if all the servers within the fault set fail simultaneously
What is the storage requirement for fault sets?
must be enough capacity within at least 3 fault set units to enable mirroring
How are fault sets deployed?
deployed automatically when a template is deployed to create a resource group
What must you ensure before manually deploying fault sets within a protection domain?
ensure protection domain exists or add a new protection domain
ensure that a storage pool and fault sets exist
add the SDS, designate a protection domain and the fault set and at the same time add the SDS devices into the storage pool
What should you ensure before deleting a fault set?
ensure that any configured SDSs have been removed from the fault set
What is a storage pool?
a subset of physical storage devices in a protection domain
each storage device belongs to only one storage pool
How does a storage pool work?
when volume is configured the volume contents are distributed over all the devices residing in the same storage pool
each block of data consists of two copies that are on different SDSs
What capabilties do storage pools allow?
enable creating different tiers in the PowerFlex system
What is the rule with storage pool devices?
Should all have the same media type, size and interface
ensures that each volume is distributed over devices of the same performance profile
What are the two types of storage pools in PowerFlex?
MG (medium granularity)
FG (fine granularity)
What does the granularity in a storage pool refer to?
refers to its allocation unit size
What is an MG pool?
volumes are divided into 1MB allocation sizes which are distributed and replicated across all disks in the pool
best suited for performance driven workloads
What is an FG pool?
more space efficient with an allocation of 4KB
physical data placement scheme is based on a Log Structure Array (LSA) architecture built on NVDIMMs
if admins want to enable compression than FG pools are required
What storage pool settings can an admin configure?
checksum, zero padding, compression
What does enabling the background device scanner do in storage pools?
check for errors on the device in the specified storage pool
How does PowerFlex maintain user data?
a distributed mesh mirror layout
each piece of data is stored on two different fault units
What is a rebuild process in PowerFlex?
when a failure occurs it’s a process that the system undertakes to protect the data
What are the two types of rebuilds in PowerFlex?
Forward Rebuild
Backward Rebuild
PowerFlex automatically determines which rebuild method to use
What is a forward rebuild?
process of creating another copy of data on a new server
all the devices in the storage pool work together in a many to many fashion to create new copies of all the failed blocks
ensures a fast rebuild
What is a backwards rebuild?
process of resynchronization of one of the copies
done by passing to the copy only changes made to the data while this copy was inaccessible
minimizes the amount of data transferred over the network during recovery
What is rebuild throttling?
sets the rebuild priority policy for a storage pool
What does the policy determine in rebuild throttling?
the priority between the rebuild IO and application IO when accessing SDS devices
regardless of which policy is chosen application IO is still served
What is the impact of a rebuild throttling policy?
increases the time that the system is exposed with a single copy of some of the data but will reduce impact on the application
right balance between the two must be determined
What are the different rebuild throttling policy options?
No Limit
Limit Concurrent IO
Favor Application IO
Dynamic Bandwidth Throttling
What is the No Limit policy?
no limit on rebuild IOs
any rebuild IO is submitted to the device immediately without further queueing
What is Limit Concurrent IO policy?
limit the number of concurrent rebuild IOs per SDS device
How does the Limit Concurrent IO policy work?
rebuild IOs are limited to a predefined number of concurrent IOs
when the limit is reached the the next incoming rebuild IO waits until the completion of a current running rebuild IO
What are the pros and cons of the Limit Concurrent IO policy?
completes the Rebuild quickly for best reliability but can have application impact
What is the Favor Application IO policy?
limits rebuild in both concurrent IOs and bandwidth
How does the Favor Application IO policy work?
as long as the number of concurrent rebuild IOs and the bandwisth they consume don’t exceed the predefined limits rebuild IOs will be served
once either threshold is reached the rebuild IOs wait until both IO and bandwidth are below the thresholds
What is an example of the Favor Application IO policy?
setting the value to 1 guarantees the devices only has one concurrent rebuild IO at any given moment
ensures the application IOs only wait for one rebuild IO
What is the Dynamic Bandwidth Throttling policy?
similar to Favor Application IO but extends the interval in which application IOs are considered to be flowing by defining a minimal quiet period
What is the quiet period in Dynamic Bandwidth Throttling policy?
defined as a certain interval in which no application IOs occur
limits on rebuild bandwidth and concurrent IOs still in place
What is the default Rebuild Throttling policy?
Limit Concurrent IO with a setting of 1
What is a Rebalance process in PowerFlex?
when system detects users data is not balanced across devices in a storage pool rebalancing process done
involves copying data from the most used devices to the least used devices
How do Rebuild and Rebalance policies affect performance?
both compete with the application IO for system resources (disk, CPU, network)
When does PowerFlex initiate a Rebalance process?
when the system detects that user data is not evenly balanced across the fault units in a storage pool
What is Rebalance Throttling?
sets the rebalance priority policy for a storage pool
policy determines the priority between the rebalance IO and the application IO when accessing SDS devices
What is the different between rebuild and rebalance throttling policy setting?
rebalance unlike rebuild does not impact the reliability of the system and therefore reducing it’s impact is not risky
What are the different rebalance throttling policy options?
No Limit
Limit Concurrent IO
Favor Application IO
Dynamic Bandwidth Throttling
What is the default policy for rebalance throttling?
Favor Application IO with a concurrent IO setting of 1 per SDS device and rebalance bandwidth limit of 10240 KB/s
What are acceleration pools?
used to provide write caching using NVDIMM devices when configured with FG storage pools
How do you deploy acceleration pools?
when deploying nodes the box Enable Compression is available under a template setting for Protection Domains
if checked when deploying the template PowerFlex uses nodes that have at least 2 NVDIMMs in them
Besides at least two NVDIMMs what is also required for a node to be used for an acceleration pool?
SSD/NVMe devices
have persistent memory turned on
What are the minimum requirements before installing SDS on a node?
at least one storage pool is defined in the required protection domain
all devices in the storage pool are the same media (make sure storage pool is configured to receive that media type)
at least one acceleration pool is defined if adding acceleration devices
What tests are run by the PowerFlex appliance when adding a new node?
random writes and random reads
tests must be performed before its capacity can be used
when the tests are complete the device capacity is added automatically to the storage pool using MDM
What is maintenance mode?
feature that is used to safely streamline system operation when maintenance or a planned SDS restart is required
takes a node offline to repair, replace, upgrade all while allowing the data residing on that node to remain available
What are the general requirements to enable maintenance mode?
two nodes from the same protection domain cannot go into maintenance mode simultaneously
protected and instant maintenance modes can’t be simultaneously active within a protection domain
if fault sets are in use for the containing protection domain all SDSs concurrently in protected maintenance mode must belong to the same fault set
What are the two types of maintenance mode?
instant maintenance mode
protected maintenance mode
What happens in instant maintenance mode (IMM)?
an SDS node is immediately and temporarily removed from active participation without building a new copy on another node
changes are tracked and and synced when the node is available node
What is the advantage of IMM?
speed at which the mode is entered and the quick resync of changes when exiting
What is the disadvantage of IMM?
single copy exposure - could lead to unavailability/data loss
What is protected maintenance mode (PMM)?
creates a third copy of data before entering maintenance mode
data is mirrored on two nodes
changes are tracked and resynched when the node is available again
What are the advantages of PMM?
two copies of the data are always available
many to one rebuilds are avoided
performance is better when exiting PMM than IMM
What are the disadvantages of PMM?
requires more spare capacity than IMM
takes longer to enter PMM than IMM
How do you abort PMM?
can be aborted both manually by the user or automatically by the system
Why would the system automatically abort PMM?
if there is a system failure while node is in PMM
if there is not enough spare space capacity available to copy data from the target SDS node
How does PowerFlex Manager assist with maintenance?
enables you to put a node in service mode when you must perform maintenance operations on the node
you can specify whether you are performing short term or long term maintenance
What must be configured first before using NVMe-of w/ PowerFlex?
SDTs (NVMe Target)
What is the NVMe target?
a frontend component that translates NVMe-of protocol into internal PowerFlex protocols
provides IO and discovery services to NVMe hosts configured on the system
What must occur before a protection domain can serve NVMe hosts?
minimum of 2 NVMe targets must be assigned to the protection domain for minimal path resiliency
TCP ports, IP addresses and IP address roles must be configured for each NVMe target
What are the options available when it comes to configuring IP addresses for the NVMe targets?
can assign both storage and hosts roles to the same target IP addresses
can assign the storage role to one IP address and add another IP address for the host role
either way both roles must be configured on the NVMe target
How do the host and storage roles work for the NVMe target?
host port listens for incoming connections from hosts over NVMe protocols
storage port listens for connections from the MDM
What do you do once NVMe targets have been configured?
add hosts to PowerFlex and then map volumes to the host
connect hosts to NVMe targets preferrably using the discovery feature
What must be configured on the compute nodes to use NVMe-of?
on OS of compute nodes NVMe initiators must be configured
What network connectivity is required to use NVMe-of?
connectivity required between NVMe targets and NVMe initiators and also between NVMe targets and SDSs
What are the two methods of consuming PowerFlex storage?
using the SDC kernel driver
using NVMe-TCP connectivity
What is a host according to PowerFlex?
entities that consume PowerFlex storage for application usage
a host is either an SDC or NVMe host
What must you ensure to configure NVMe hosts?
Have NQN Name
ensure host is connected to ethernet switch
ensure host has correct VLAN ID and routing rules
When can volumes be created on PowerFlex?
after storage devices are added to the storage pool
What is the minimum requirement to start allocating volumes?
at least 3 SDS nodes
each SDS should be in separate fault unit
each device has minimum of 240GB of free space
What must be done for applications to have access to volumes?
volume must be mapped to an SDC host
What is the naming rule for volumes?
less than 32 characters
What is range in size a volume can be?
8GB - 1PB
When can you increase volume size?
capacity can be increased (but not decreased) when there is available free capacity
expansion can be performed on single or multiple volumes simultaneously
How does mapping volumes work?
mapping exposes volume to specified host -creates block device on that host
can map a volume to one or more hosts
can be mapped to either an SDC or NVMe host but not both simultaneously
How are bandwidth and IOPS limits set for volumes?
set on a per host basis
lets you control quality of service
How does PowerFlex manage volume snapshots?
vTree structure
What is a vTree (volume tree) structure?
structure that spans from the source volume as the root to its derivative snapshots
snapshots are either copies of the base or descendants (snapshots of snapshots)
no matter how many copies exist as long as they relate back to the source volume they all belong to the same vTree
What does migration of a vTree allow?
allows you to move a source volume along with all snapshots of that volume to a different storage pool
process that can take days or weeks due to size of vTree
What must you do before you remove volumes from a PowerFlex?
must be unmapped from the host they are connected to
What are snapshots used for in PowerFlex?
to instantaneously capture the state of the volume at a specific point in time
What happens once a snapshot is taken in PowerFlex?
becomes a new unmapped volume in the system
can be manipulated to be in a state such as mapped, unmapped, renamed, and resized like normal volumes
How many snapshots can an individual volume have in PowerFlex?
128
How can PowerFlex snapshots have relationships across different vTrees?
when you take a snapshot multiple volumes can be taken simultaneously
all snapshots taken together this way form a consistency group
What are the two types of snapshots on PowerFlex?
normal snapshots
secure snapshots
What are the features of normal snapshots?
thinly provisioned and writable regardless of the original volume
when volume/snapshot is created you can view capacity in dashboard
can be initiated manually
volumes and their snapshots are organized into a vTree
What are secure snapshots?
support compliance applications and can be configured with predefined retention periods
snapshots w/ active retention can’t be deleted
What are the features of secure snapshots?
provide two key properties (secured flag & expiration time)
are read only
strict dual signature policy for Dell support to remove them
pausing, altering, or deleting the policy does not delete snapshots marked secure
What is secured flag?
determines if the expiration field is active
What is expiration time?
determines the retention interval
What is a snapshot lock?
prevents a snapshot from being deleted
you can autolock the snapshots through the autoremoval process to avoid deletion
you can unlock the snapshots later so that they are automatically removed
What is native asynchronous replication used for in PowerFlex?
enables disaster recovery and data protection of database or application data
can also be used for data migration or distribution of workloads to secondary environments
How does asynchronous replication work on PowerFlex?
defines a point in time and ensures that all writes carried out before that point are copied to the destination
What are the steps in remote replication setup?
install the remote (target) PFlex
exchange root certificates
configure journal capacity
add a replication peer
configure replication volumes
What must be installed on both the source and target PowerFlex systems for remote replication?
SDR (storage data replicator)
How does the exchange root certificate step work?
for the two clusters to communicate securely each system must export its root certificate, upload it to its peer, and import the peer certificate
How does PowerFlex hold replication data?
uses the journal capacity
How does the configure journal capacity step work?
source system accumulates data changes in the journal and sends them to the target
target system accumulates received data in the target journal until a complete consistent image is received and can be applied to target volumes
What is important about configuring replication volumes?
volumes to be replicated must be the same size on the source and target systems - systems should be connected
Why is swapping root certificates important for remote replication?
required to allow communication and data transfer between clusters
How is journal capacity defined?
a percentage of the total capacity in the storage pool
What is the minimum for journal capacity?
must equal at least 10% of the total application pool
What are the following factors when calculating journal capacity?
ensure there is enough space in the storage pool
when the total storage capacity increases a small percentage is needed for the journal capacity
as application workload increases more journal capacity must be dealt
depends on the change rate of the dataset and the RPO
What is the relation between journal capacity and RPO?
data writes are accumulated in the journal until half the RPO is reached to ensure a consistent copy is maintained between the volumes
What are the availability requirements of the allocated journal capacity?
must sustain an outage as determined by the application WAN bandwidth requirement multiplied by the expected WAN outage
if an aplication has a heavier IO load larger capacity should be used
if a longer outage is expected a greated capacity should be used
What is an example of sizing journal capacity for an application?
- An application generates 1 GB/s of writes.
- The maximal supported outage is 3 hours (3 hours x 3600 seconds = 10800 seconds).
- The journal capacity that is needed for this application is 1 GB/s x 10800 s = ~10.547 TB.
- Since the journal capacity is expressed as a percentage of the storage pool capacity, divide the 10.547 TB by the size of the storage pool, which is 200 TB: 100 x 10.547 TB/200 TB = 5.27%. Round up to 6%.
- Repeat the process for each application being replicated.
What should you do if there are replicated volumes in more than one storage pool in the protection domain?
journal capacity calculation should be completed for each storage pool
allocated journal capacity in the protection domain must at least equal the sum of the size per application pool
What do you need before connecting peer systems for replication?
system IDs for both target and source systems
displayed immediately after login to the SCLI
can be obtained by running the command scli-query all
What is the final step in configuring asynchronous remote replication?
create a replication consistency group (RCG) and add it to the system
What is the role of RCGs?
replication occurs between volumes and RCGs maintain consistency between volume pairs in an RCG
What happens once you configure an RCG pair?
a RPO is set - defines the maximum amount of time which data can be lost
setting low RPO ensures minimal data is lost should the data transfer be interrupted between target and source
What is the data loss exposure in PowerFlex asynchronous remote replication?
half of the RPO value
if one minute is set as the RPO no more than 30 seconds of data will be lost
highly recommended to set RPO to low for minimal data loss
minimum amount of time this feature allows is 15 seconds
What is the overall replication IO flow in PowerFlex?
asynchronous replication uses a journal based architecture
journals reside as volumes in a storage pool
a replication journal is copied from the source journal buffer by the SDR to the target journal buffer
once journals have been copied to storage devices and secured the original is deleted to make room for new journals
What is a file system?
represents a set of storage resources that provides network file storage
storage system establishes file system that either Windows or Linux users can connect to
How do users access a file system?
Through its shares - which draw from the total storage that is allocated to the file system
What is the role of a NAS Server in PowerFlex?
provide access to file systems each NAS Server supports SMB or NFS
a NAS server can have more than one file system but each file system can only be associated with one NAS Server
What is the role of client systems with NAS Servers?
client systems connect to a NAS Server on the storage system to get access to file system shares
What is a file system?
a manageable container for file based storage
has a specific amount of storage and specific protocol
has one or more shares
What is a file share?
a mountable access point to file system storage that network users and hosts can use for file based storage
each share associated with a single file system and inherits the file system protocol
shares of multiprotocol file system can be SMB or NFS
How can an admin manage the PowerFlex file services?
by selecting the PowerFlex Manager File Menu
How does an admin create a NAS Server?
admin selects file/NAS server options option in PFlex Manager
in NAS Server page the admin then selects the Create NAS Server button
in the Create NAS Server wizard the detail page is where a protection domain is selected and name/network info entered
What are file system quotas?
method admins use to ensure no individual user consumes all the available storage from a file system
What protocols are file system quotas supported on?
SMB, NFS, FTP, NDMP, multiprotocol
What types of quotas does PowerFlex support?
user quotas
quota trees
user quotas on quota trees
What is true about the quota types in PowerFlex?
can all coexist simultaneously on the same file system
if limits of multiple quota types are reached simultaneously whichever threshold is met first is considered the effective policy
What are user quotas?
set at a file system level to limit the amount of space a user may consume on a file system
What is a tree quota?
limit the maximum size of a directory on a file system
not tracking on user by user basis like user quotas but to whole directories
What may an admin use a tree quota for?
set storage limits on a project basis
track directory usage
What is user quota on tree quota?
occurs when a tree quota is created and the admin creates additional user quotas within the directory and enforces user quotas
How do admins create NAS Servers?
by adding production or backup file interfaces
when additional interfaces are added the admin selects the preferred network
What protocols can be configured for NAS Servers?
SMB, NFS, FTP
What must an admin do if they want multiprotocol access?
must configure user mapping
How does PowerFlex protect NAS Servers?
snapshots (short term RTO) and NDMP (long term retention)
How many snapshots are allowed on a separate file system?
126
How long are manual snapshots retained on PowerFlex?
retained for a week
What is the default access type for file snapshots?
read only
What are the different file snapshot access types?
protocol (read only)
snapshot
protocol (read-write)
What is the read only access type?
creates read only snapshot that can be mounted and accessed later through NFS export and SMB share
What is the snapshot access type?
creates a read only automounted snapshot accessible through the snapshot directory in the file system
What is the read-write access type?
creates read-write snapshot that can be mounted and accessed later through NFS export and SMB share
What is NDMP?
provides a standard for backing up file servers on a network
What happens once NDMP is enabled on PowerFlex?
third party data management application can detect the NDMP using the NAS Server IP address
What are the NAS Server security types?
Kerberos
Common Antivirus Agent (CAVA)
What is Kerberos?
distributed authentication service designed to provide strong authentication with encryption keys
What is CAVA?
available for SMB Servers
an antivirus solution for clients using NAS Servers
What is the MDM responsible for?
controls and tracks the association of physical and logical storage
maintains data protection based on mirroring strategy
ensures storage demand is evenly distributed
What does the MDM cluster consist of?
primary MDM
secondary MDM
tiebreaker MDM
standby MDM (not part of the cluster)
MDMs assigned role during initial installation
What must happen before an MDM can be part of a cluster?
must be promoted to standby MDM then promoted to be a cluster member
What are the two types of MDM cluster configurations deployed?
3 or 5 MDM instances that run on different servers for high availability
What roles can an MDM take during installation?
manager
tiebreaker (default)
role can’t be changed later without reinstalling MDM
What is a primary MDM?
MDM in the cluster that controls the SDCs and SDSs
What is contained in the primary MDM?
contains the MDM repository (Database that stores the SDS configurations and how data is distributed between SDSs)
repository constantly replicated to secondary MDM for high availability
every MDM cluster has one primary
What is a secondary MDM?
MDM in a cluster that is ready to take over as the primary MDM if ever necessary
How are secondary MDMs set up?
in three node MDM their is one secondary allowing for a single point of failure
in five node there are two secondary MDMs thus allowing for two points of failure
What is a tiebreaker MDM?
role is to help determine which MDM is the primary
can be a standby or member of the cluster
not a manager
How are tiebreaker MDMs setup?
in a 3 node cluster that is 1 tiebreaker
in a 5 node cluster there are 2 tiebreakers
always ensure that there’s an odd number of total MDMs in a cluster which guarantees theres always a majority when electing the primary
What is a standby MDM?
MDM outside of the cluster that is attached or locked to a specific cluster
can be called on to assume the position of a manager MDM or tiebreaker MDM according to how it’s installed when promoted
What is a manager MDM?
MDM that can act as a primary or secondary in the cluster
can be a standby or member of a cluster
What is a Replica MDM?
MDM that contains a replica of the MDM repository which includes the primary MDM and all its secondaries in the cluster
What is CloudLink?
software that secures sensitive information within virtual machines across private and public clouds
How does CloudLink work?
features policy based agent encryption for multiple levels of the data center
What is the benefit of CloudLink on PowerFlex?
PowerFlex does not encrypt pre-existing data on SDS devices
CloudLink installed to encrypt storage devices before they are added to available PowerFlex storage
How do admins perform backup and restores on PowerFlex?
PowerFlex Manager
What is recommended before performing an upgrade on PowerFlex?
backup SSL and trusted certificates
backup prior iteration of PowerFlex Manager
When can an admin run a backup on PowerFlex?
can do so manually at any time
What must an admin do if they want to perform a restore of PowerFlex?
must run a script outside of PowerFlex Manager
user interface doesn’t support the ability to restore a backup
What role can vCenter play in backup and restores?
can be configured to automatically backup the configuration at scheduled intervals for PowerFlex Rack
can also be performed manually
What does performing a vCenter backup do in PowerFlex rack?
operation backs up the primary vCenter server instance
How does an admin perform a restore of primary vCenter server instance for PowerFlex Rack backups?
admin deploys a new vCenter/ESXi server first
next step is to copy the data from the source appliance to the new vCenter appliance
What is the role of iDRAC in PowerFlex rack?
provides server data to the OOB management switch in the Rack
can save iDRAC configuration through iDRAC UI
What is the recommendation for PowerFlex Rack customer owned switches?
advised to back switches up immediately after successful deployment
customer responsible for providing backup location and maintaining switch backups
How does an admin backup a switch?
connects to the switch either through a console cable, telnet or SSH
What is the default location for CloudLink backups?
local desktop
can be configured to local FTP or SFTP server
can be set to do automatic scheduled backups