Create Remote Archive Volume with Azure Blob Storage

You need a remote archive volume to store your Exasol backups. If you did not create a remote archive volume during installation, you can create one using EXAoperation. Exasol recommends using Blob Storage to store your backups for Exasol on Azure.

Prerequisites

  • A container in your Azure Blob. If you do not have a container, see Create a storage account and Create a container.

  • The URL of the container in one of the following formats:

    • http://storage_container_name.blob.corewindows.net/container_name

    • https://storage_container_name.blob.corewindows.net/container_name

  • Read and write access to the Blob storage.

    If the nodes are on a private network, make sure that a service endpoint for Microsoft Storage is configured in your VNet to store backups in the container. For more information, see Virtual Network service endpoints.

  • An access key for the Blob storage account. You can find the key under Settings option of your storage account.

  • If DNS hostnames are used, ensure that the cluster has DNS servers configured.

  • All nodes must be able to reach the remote storage.

Configure remote archive volume in EXAoperation

Do the following to configure the remote archive volume:

  1. Log in to EXAoperation.
  2. Go to Services > EXAStorage and click on Add Remote Volume.

  3. Enter the following details:
    • Archive URL: Use the URL of the remote archive destination. For information about the supported protocols and example URLs, see Other protocols with URL examples.
    • User: Enter the name of the user.
    • Password: Use key1 or key2 from the access key of your storage account in Azure portal as password for the remote archive
    • Allowed Users: Select the EXAoperation users that can use the remote archive volume.
    • Read-only Users: Select the EXAoperation users that can read from the remote archive volume.

      Any user that you add as to the Read-only Users list will be limited to read-only access, even if the user is added to the Allowed Users list. If you have only one user in the Allowed Users list, do not add this user to the Read-only Users list.

    • Labels: Add a label to the remote archive volume for easy identification.
    • Options: You can add one or more options (separated by commas) depending on the protocol used. For more information, see Remote archive volume options.
  4. Click on Add to create the volume.

Remote archive volume options

The following options can be set in the Options field when creating a remote archive volume (depending on the protocol). You can enter multiple options separated by commas.

Option Description
cleanvolume Remote backups will be deleted on expiry. See also Backup Essentials.
noverifypeer Do not check the server certificate.
nocompression Write raw (uncompressed) data to the archive volume.
forcessl Use STARTTLS in the FTP connection.
webdav Set this option when using WebDAV for http (unencrypted) URLs.
webhdfs Set this option when connecting using the WebHDFS protocol (Apache Hadoop).
s3 Volume uses the S3 object format. This option is not required if the remote archive is an Amazon S3 bucket.
timeout=seconds Override the default client/server response time. For example: timeout=300
verbose Write more information to the logs. This will be required when troubleshooting problems with backups.

Other protocols with URL examples

The port numbers in this table are examples. Most protocols allow you to set the port.

Protocol URL example
FTP

ftp://<ftpserver>:2021/optional-directory/

FTPS ftps://<ftpserver>:2021/optional-directory/
SMB smb:////<smbserver>:2139/optional-directory/
WebHDFS

http://<hadoop-server>:2080/optional-directory/

https://<hadoop-server>:20443/optional-directory/

S3

http://<bucketname>.s3.amazonaws.com/optional-directory/

https://<bucketname>.s3.amazonaws.com/optional-directory/

For more information, see Create Remote Archive Volume with Amazon S3.
Google Cloud Storage

http://<bucketname>.storage.googleapis.com

https://<bucketname>.storage.googleapis.com

For more information, see Create Remote Archive Volume with Google Cloud Storage.