Dell DL4000 Appliance Deployment Guide

When installing the Agent software on Linux machines that you want to protect, use the following guidance. After installation is complete, configure the Agent as described in the topic “Configuring the Rapid Recovery Agent on a Linux machine” in the Dell Data Protection | Rapid Recovery 6.0 Installation and Upgrade Guide.

The method for installing and removing the Agent software on Linux machines has changed. As of release 6.0.1, the following factors apply:

• One set of instructions applies to installations of Agent on a Linux machine with current access to the Internet. This is referred to as online installation. Instead of using shell scripts, package managers are used to install or remove the Rapid Recovery software from a repository referenced on the local Linux machine.
  NOTE: The repository is used for staging of files for the relevant package managers. This repository is not related to the Rapid Recovery repository.
• If installing Agent on a Linux machine with no access to the Internet (such as an air-gapped or secured standalone machine), this is referred to as offline installation. For this process, you must first download an installation package from a Linux machine with Internet access, and then move those installation files to the secured computer for installation.

Because the various supported Linux distributions use different package managers for online installation, the procedure for installing, upgrading, or removing Agent on any supported Linux OS depends on the package manager used. The package managers, and the Linux distributions they support, are described in the following table.

As a one-time setup step for each Linux machine, you must configure your local software repository to point to the location where the package manager obtains Dell Rapid Recovery installation files.

After you configure a software repository on your Linux machine, the package manager is able to retrieve and install the packages needed for installation or removal of Rapid Recovery Agent software and related components, such as aamount (now called local mount), aavdisk (now called rapidrecovery-vdisk), and Mono (an open source, Ecma standard-compliant, .NET Framework-compatible tool set used for porting the Agent software to Linux platforms).

For each package manager, you can run the appropriate command at the command line to determine if it is configured to download Rapid Recovery packages. These commands are listed in the following table.

Previous versions of the AppAssure Agent software must be completely removed from a Linux machine before installing the Rapid Recovery Agent version and protecting the Linux machine using the Rapid Recovery Core. This is true for online or offline installations. Removing AppAssure Agent employs the use of shell scripts. The uninstall instructions differ, depending on the Linux distribution you are using. For more information on uninstalling AppAssure Agent from a Linux machine, see the topic “Uninstalling the AppAssure Agent software from a Linux machine” in the Dell Data Protection | Rapid Recovery 6.0 Installation and Upgrade Guide.

If installing Rapid Recovery Agent on a Linux machine that has never had AppAssure Agent installed, determine the appropriate package manager from the preceding table. Then follow the appropriate installation procedure.

After configuring the newly installed Agent software on a Linux machine, you must restart the machine. Restarting ensures that the proper kernel driver version is used to protect your machine.

Thus, the installation process when upgrading from AppAssure to Rapid Recovery involves:

• Removing the AppAssure Agent software (not required for first-time installations)
• Determine the relevant package manager for your Linux distribution
• Follow the procedure for installing Rapid Recovery Agent on the Linux machine, including configuring the software repository (steps 1 through 4 of the installation procedure)
• Run the configuration utility to set port, configure users, add firewall exclusions, install the kernel module, and start the Agent service.
• Restart the Linux machine

The instructions for installing the Agent software on a Linux machine differ slightly depending on the Linux distribution you are using. For more information about preparing for and installing the Agent software for a Linux machine connected to the Internet, see the appropriate topic. You can choose from the following sections:

• Installing the Rapid Recovery Agent software on Debian or Ubuntu
• Installing the Rapid Recovery Agent software on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

• Installing the Agent software on offline Linux machines

Before you begin installation of Agent software, see the topics: Downloading the Linux distribution, About security, Location of Linux Agent files, Agent dependencies, Linux scripting information in the Dell Data Protection | Rapid Recovery 6.0 Installation and Upgrade Guide.