Data storage
Published 10 December 2021
This page describes how your data (e.g. database instances and backups) is retrieved and stored in Redgate Clone.
Contents
Database backup files
To create data images from backups you will need to store the backup files in the accessible shared folder, which can be either NFS or SMB file share.
When creating a data image you need to provide the backup file path relative to the file share root. (See data image definition examples for more details).
You can configure SMB or NFS file share connection in Admin Console.
File shares are only used for images created from backups
The file share configured for Redgate Clone will only be accessed and mounted for usage by the product if you are creating a Data image from a backup.
In other words, file shares will not be touched when creating empty data images.
Data images
When creating a data images, the backups will be read and the new image is stored in the local storage disks attached to the VM instance.
A multi-disk setup is available by default in our standard configuration, but you can restrict this by changing the value for the name pattern.
This can be configured in Admin Console.
Data containers
Like data images, data containers are also stored in local storage volumes attached to your cluster (VM instance). It is configurable via the same Data Image and Data Container Storage Settings in Admin Console. Thus, changing those settings will affect both - data images & data containers.
However, it's worth noting that data containers only contain the data difference to their parent data image, they are typically much smaller in size.
Clean-up unused Data Containers
It's still advisable to delete unused ones with the rgclone delete data-container command.
A note on scaling and sizes
Because data images are point-in-time copies of a database that are used as templates for data containers, their size is directly proportional to the size of the database backups that we are dealing with, so please make sure that the attached volumes are big enough to hold them.
Please check the Requirements section in either Installation steps for a few guidelines around disk size and also adding disks for how to scale them out (horizontal upscaling).
You can free up space by running the rgclone delete data-image command against unneeded data images.
