Physical Server Requirements

To register your physical servers, ensure your servers meet the OS version & other requirements, then download & install the Cohesity Agent.

Before you register your physical server sources, confirm that the server is on a supported OS version and meets the disk and ports requirements below, then download & install the Cohesity Agent on each server you want to protect.

Support Matrix

Before you register your physical servers, ensure that you have the supported physical server versions. For more information, see Supported Software for DataProtect as a Service.

Disk Requirements

To install the Cohesity Agent, you'll need at least 56 MB of disk space on Windows systems and 360 MB on Linux systems.

Ports Requirements

Ensure that the ports listed in the Physical Servers section of the Firewall Ports for User-Deployed SaaS Connectors topic are open to allow communication between the Cohesity SaaS Connector(s) and Physical Servers.

Download and Install the Cohesity Agent

Install the Cohesity Agent on each Windows and Linux physical server that you want to protect.

Install the Cohesity Windows Agent

To download and install the Cohesity Windows Agent:

  1. In DataProtect as a Service, navigate to the Sources page and click + Register Source in the upper-right corner of the page.

  2. Navigate to Sources and select Register Source > Physical > Start Registration.

  3. In the Register Physical dialog box, select an existing SaaS connection marked Unused or click Create SaaS Connection and follow the instructions in Create a SaaS Connection, and then click Continue.

  4. Click Download Cohesity Agent and download it to the appropriate server.

  5. As an administrator with local system privileges on that server, run the executable and complete the installation wizard.

If you have only Windows servers, you're ready to register them. If you have Linux servers to protect, see Install the Cohesity Linux Agent.

Cohesity Windows Agent does not support file path names that are not compliant with UNICODE or UTF-8 encoding.

The table below lists the encodings that are not supported.

Language

Locale

Windows Code Page

Simplified Chinese

zh_CN

936

Traditional Chinese.

zh_TW

950

Japanese-SJIS

ja_JP

932

Japanese-EUC

ja_JP

20932

Korean

ko_KR

949

Install the Cohesity Linux Agent

The Cohesity Linux Agent is available with different installer packages, providing support on multiple Linux distributions. You’ll need to install the appropriate package (RPM, Debian, or SUSE RPM) for your Linux distribution or install the script installer package.

The installer packages and Linux distributions on which the installer package is supported are:

Installer Package Linux Distribution
(Default) RPM RHEL and its derivatives
Suse RPM SUSE
Debian Debian and Ubuntu
Script Installer All supported Linux operating systems

The Cohesity Linux Agent has dependencies on the following packages, which must be installed on the Linux server:

Command/Package

RHEL and its derivatives

SUSE

Debian/Ubuntu

rsync

rsync

rsync

rsync

mount

util-linux

util-linux

mount

lvm2

lvm2

lvm2

lvm2

sudo

sudo

sudo

sudo

coreutils

coreutils

coreutils

coreutils

util-linux

util-linux

util-linux

util-linux

nfs client

nfs-utils

nfs client

nfs-common

lsof

lsof

lsof

lsof

wget

wget

wget

wget

Install RPM, Debian, or SUSE RPM Installer Package

To install the RPM, Debian, or SUSE installer package:

  1. In DataProtect as a Service, navigate to the Sources page and click + Register Source in the upper-right corner of the page.

  2. Navigate to Sources and select Register Source > Physical > Start Registration.

  3. In the Register Physical dialog box, select an existing SaaS connection marked Unused or click Create SaaS Connection and follow the instructions in Create a SaaS Connection, and then click Continue.

  4. Click Download Cohesity Agent. Based on your Linux distribution, from the Download Agents window, select RPM, Debian, or SUSE RPM and download it to the server you want to protect.

  5. As the root user with local system privileges on that server, change the directory to the location of the installer package.

  6. Run the following command depending on the installer package:

    Installer Package Command
    RPM rpm -i el-cohesity-agent-6.5.1-1.x86_64.rpm or yum localinstall ./el-cohesityagent-6.5.1-1.x86_64.rpm
    Debian dpkg -i cohesity-agent_6.5.1-1_amd64.deb
    Suse RPM rpm -i cohesity-agent-6.5.1-1.x86_64.rpm

    By default, the installation uses the root user permission for all the files, and the service is started as root. Therefore, it is necessary to add non-root users to the sudoers list by making the following changes in the /etc/sudoers file:

    <username> ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL
    Defaults:<username> !requiretty

  7. To start the service as a non-root user, create a new user or use an existing user with sudo permission and run the following command:

    Installer Package Command
    RPM export COHESITYUSER=<username> ; rpm -i el-cohesity-agent-6.5.1-1.x86_64
    Debian COHESITYUSER=<username> dpkg -i cohesity-agent_6.5.1-1_amd64
    Suse RPM export COHESITYUSER=<username> rpm -i cohesity-agent-6.5.1-1.x86_64

  8. Provide the location details for:

    • Installation directory: /opt/cohesity

    • Log file: /var/log/cohesity

Install Script Installer Package

To install the script installer package:

  1. In DataProtect as a Service, navigate to the Sources page and click + Register Source in the upper-right corner of the page.

  2. Navigate to Sources and select Register Source > Physical > Start Registration.

  3. Click Download Cohesity Agent. Based on your Linux distribution, select Script Installer and download it to the server you want to protect from the Download Agents window.

  4. As the root user with local system privileges on that server, change the directory to the location of the installer package.

    For SLES 11 SP4, you are required to install the Agent as the root user.

  5. Make the installer executable. For example:

    chmod +x cohesity_agent_6.5.1-master_linux_x64_installer

  6. Run the executable:

    sudo cohesity_agent_6.5.1-master_linux_x64_installer -- --install

  7. Provide the location details for:

    • Installation directory: /home/<username>/cohesityagent or /root/cohesityagent

    • Log file: /home/cohesityagent/cohesityagent/logs

The Agent starts after installation completes, as follows:

  • CentOS and RedHat (distributions with the "systemd" init system): The Agent starts automatically.

  • Ubuntu (distributions with the "upstart" init system): The Agent starts automatically.

    If a Linux server's /etc/sudoers file is managed by a deployment engine such as Chef, Puppet, or others, this might affect Cohesity DataProtect as a Service's interaction with servers that have the Linux Agent installed. Take the corresponding actions depending on user type:

    Agent Installation by User Type Action Required
    As the default cohesityagent user

    The Cohesity Linux Agent is installed using the cohesityagent user by default.

    For default installations, the cohesityagent user is created by the installer. During installation, the installer updates the /etc/sudoers file to allow cohesityagent sudo and no-tty sudo access.

    Ensure the following settings in the /etc/sudoers file for the cohesityagent user are preserved:

    cohesityagent  ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL
    Defaults:cohesityagent !requiretty

    For example:

    #includedir /etc/sudoers.d
    dgoble ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL
    cohbackup ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL
    Defaults:cohbackup !requiretty
    As a non-default user, for example, foo Ensure the above settings in the /etc/sudoers file for the foo user are preserved by replacing the occurrences of 'cohesityagent' with 'foo'.
    As root user No changes required.

Upgrade the Agent on a Physical Server

When we release a new version of the Cohesity Agent, you will see an option to upgrade it on the source details page.

To upgrade the Cohesity Agent running on your physical server source:

  1. In DataProtect as a Service, navigate to Sources and click into the physical server source name.

  2. In the Source Details page, click the More Options menu () and then select Upgrade Agent.

    The Upgrade Agent option is enabled only when a new version of the Agent is available.

  3. Select:

    • Upgrade Now to upgrade the Agent immediately, then click Confirm.

    • Schedule for Later. In the Schedule Agent Upgrade dialog, set the Date & Time for the upgrade and click Schedule for Later.

The agent upgrade executes on the physical server source you selected.

Considerations

  • Currently, a source can either be protected as either a physical server or as a SQL database, but not both.

  • Volume-based physical backups are not supported.

Next > Now you can register your physical server sources to protect them!