Self-Hosted Offline Server

What is an Offline Server setup?

A server hosted in an environment whose network requests bounds is strictly within the organizational network i.e. it cannot access the internet, (or) an air-gapped server qualifies to be an offline setup. A server in such an environment cannot reach out to public cloud services for any data transactions.

Zmanda Pro supports an Offline On-Premises deployment completely managed by your infrastructure, provided the basic pre-requisites to run the server are satisfied.

Supported Operating Systems

Zmanda Pro currently supports On-premises deployment for the following Linux Distributions:

  • RHEL 8 or above based distributions

  • Debian version 12 (bookworm) or above

System Requirements for On-Prem Zmanda Pro Server

Pre-requisites

Network configurations

DNS A name entries for the FQDNs configured to access the Zmanda Pro server UI

Example: Let's say you have setup your Zmanda Pro server listening on backup.zmanda.com

You will need to have DNS A records for the following domains in your organization's DNS manager service:

  • <ZMANDAPRO_SERVER_IP>: IP address of the Zmanda Pro server host

  • <ZMANDAPRO_SERVER_IP> backup.zmanda.com root-backup.zmanda.com

Where:

  • backup.zmanda.com - Access the dashboard and administer backups

  • root-backup.zmanda.com - Internal Zmanda Pro usage for patching upgrades

Alternatively, if you do not have an internal DNS Manager Server, you may modify the /etc/hosts file of the client devices to access the Zmanda Pro Server.

Additional requirements:

  • An intermediate CA certificate which has to be trusted by all your client devices

  • For the FQDNs specified above, generate an HTTPS certificate signed by the intermediate CA for the configured domain

    • Example: Generate an HTTPS certificate for the domain backup.zmanda.com and add the Subject Alternative Name (SAN) as root-backup.zmanda.com to the same certificate

Required ports:

  • 443: HTTPS traffic to the Zmanda Pro server

  • (Optional) 9001: HTTPS traffic to the Storagemanager service

Note: Client Devices should be able reach out to the Zmanda Pro Server machine

The Zmanda Pro Server Setup Package

  1. Download the zmandasetup.zip package into your Linux system which matches our Supported Operating Systems

  2. Unzip the setup package:

    unzip zmandasetup.zip

This will unpack all the configuration files required to run the Zmanda Pro server. The configurations are as follows:

Zmanda Pro Server Setup Package

Package Contents

  • setup.sh: The Zmanda Pro server installer

  • setup.conf: Default configurations to run the setup.sh

  • certs: Directory containing:

    • Self-signed CA certificate

    • HTTPS certificate

    • Respective keys

    • Note: It's highly recommended to use your own set of CA & HTTPS certificates

  • Dockerfile & docker-compose.yml: Docker service files for building and running the Zmanda Pro Server

  • docker-image: Contains required docker images for on-premises deployment

    • zmandapro-server-.tar will be patched for subsequent upgrades

    • Images are loaded locally, requiring no outbound requests

  • scripts: Automation scripts for client device installation

  • server.cfg: Custom Configurations for your Zmanda Pro Server

  • storagemanager.zip (OPTIONAL): The Zmanda Pro storagemanager service and its dependents

License Activator Information

What is a License Activator?

Running the setup.sh will prepare your environment to start the Zmanda Pro server. However, to administer backups and other operations you will need a License_Activator.

To activate your 'self-hosted offline' deployment, please contact the sales team at Conact a Zmanda Sales Representative.

Important notes:

  • The License Activator only activates one instance of a Zmanda Pro Server container.

  • For DR strategy or replica server setup, contact the Zmanda Sales Team for additional instances.

Running the License Activator

  • Requires an unlock key (shared by Zmanda Team over a secure protected channel)

  • Handles:

    • Zmanda Pro Server activation

    • Server upgrades

    • Patching custom configurations

  • The 'offline’ Zmanda Pro License Activator will be generated on a per container_id basis shared over the same channel by the Zmanda Team.

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