How to manage a healthy CrashPlan environment

Objective

This article walks through the necessary procedures and best practices for system administrators to perform a health check on their CrashPlan environment and optimize console settings to ensure reliable and efficient backup operations.

This process involves implementing best practices for console settings and performing routine health checks in your environment.

Prerequisites

• Administrator permissions to update console settings across all organizations and devices.
• Familiarity with the CrashPlan console and reporting tools.
• Understanding of your company's desired Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) for disaster recovery scenarios.

Procedure

You can get step-by-step recommendations to Speed up your backup, but when managing the environment as a whole ensure you've configured the appropriate default settings. In addition to implementing the best practices for your backup settings, the Administrator(s) should perform several health checks routinely to monitor and maintain the health of your CrashPlan environment.

Monitor Backup Status and Reports

Utilize CrashPlan's reporting tools to verify that backups are working as expected.

1. Check the backup status in the CrashPlan app or the Reporting menu in the CrashPlan console.
   • See CrashPlan app reference. 
   • See Reporting reference.
2. Monitor Backup status report emails. 
   • If the weekly backup status or alerts are not sent as often as needed, configure device backup settings to adjust the timing for alerts. 
   • See the Backup status report reference.
3. Address issues on the Dashboard, confirming that backup devices are online and status is 100%.
   • See Backup Usage reference for CrashPlan Endpoints.
   • See Dashboards reference for CrashPlan Enterprise and MSPs.
4. If an issue is indicated in a backup status report, respond to it promptly and ensure backup can resume without problems.
   1. See What to do after receiving a backup alert for help finding the cause and how to resolve it.
   2. See How backup works to understand the processes, and how to notice when there's an issue.

Test File Restoration

Regularly test the restore process to ensure you are familiar with it before a disaster scenario. 

Administrators with permissions to restore files can use Device restore to send the file download to a target device, and can queue the restore for backups they have access to manage. Device restore, also known as "push restore", requires the CrashPlan app is on a device, signed in to an active User account, and has permissions to the files on the device. 

1. Test restoring one or more files. 
2. Confirm that the files are restorable as expected.
3. Use the CrashPlan console to restore files in a ZIP file or by pushing the download to another device. 
   • See Download files from the web for details.
   • See Download files from the CrashPlan app when you download from the signed-in User's backups.
   • See Download files after replacing a drive when you're replacing a drive included to your backup.
   • See Retain and download deleted files when you have files not saved on your computer that need to be added from your backup.

Validate system integrations with CrashPlan

When you have CrashPlan setup to work with systems in your company's environment, you will need to periodically check that you're settings in the console are up to date. 

Verify FDA enabled for Mac devices

The CrashPlan app on MacOS requires Full Disk Access (FDA) to ensure it has access to the files and locations where you backup or restore files.. 

• The Dashboards will give some details about this, and the Device Status Report can help you confirm Full Disk Access (FDA) is enabled in MacOS. 

Confirm Deployment process is successful

Verify the deployment policies your have setup to use for deploying the CrashPlan app on new devices, and that devices are setting up correctly with it. 

• Deployment scripts containing old variables (C42_USERNAME/C42_USER_HOME) should be updated to examples in our support article, Deployment script and command reference. 
• See Deploy CrashPlan apps for detailed steps for setting up deployment policies and utilizing them in your installation procedure for CrashPlan. 
  • If you use silent registration in your deployment policy, confirm that the user detection script results return the expected results. 

Check Authentication and Provisioning Integrations

Go to the Integrations > Identity Management menu in the console to check what you've setup with the console for sign-on or SCIM user management. 

• The Authentication page will open first by default, and you can add a compatible Single sign-on(SSO) provider to handle your login to CrashPlan. 
  • If you use an authentication provider for your company, consider adding it to the CrashPlan console to manage your user logins. 
• The Provisioning page can add your directory service or Identity provider(IdP) to automate the user management in CrashPlan. 
  • If you've added your IdP as a Provisioning provider in CrashPlan, open your Sync Log to view and confirm your recent activity appears there. 
  • Ensure your SCIM is creating and updating users. 
  • See SCIM provisioning overview for more information and specific Okta, Entra ID, or PingOne setup guides.

Update your console settings

Conduct an annual check of your CrashPlan console settings to ensure you are using the appropriate settings for backing up files on all devices. Updating the Parent Org settings will apply them all to inheriting Child Orgs, and you'll have the option of applying your changes to non-inheriting orgs. 

Follow these steps to update console settings to your Organizations:

1. Configure performance settings
   1. Increase the backup and restore performance 
   2. Set the Organization's Device backup defaults to use 80/40 at a minimum.
      Many customers find success with performance limits up to 90/60 or 100/100. 
   3. Push and lock these settings to all devices and organizations.
2. Update global exclusions
   1. Import the recommended global exclusions in your Org's Device backup defaults
   2. Remove the Cloud Exclusions (a legacy setting) 
   3. Lock both settings to apply them to all your devices.
3. Adjust file selection
   1. Use the a broad file selection setting to minimize the risk of missing critical data.
      • Adjust the File Selection to include files using :main to select the root of your device.
        Note: Using :main requires that your global exclusions are up-to-date and accurate.
   2. Confirm that the file selection includes all the data you need backed up. 
      • Verify that you are not backing up operating system or application files.
      • When the size of your Included files grows larger it can affect the backup. 
        • If your selected files size are larger than 1 terabyte(TB), see Adjust app settings for memory usage with large backups.
4. Optimize Backup verification, frequency and versions
   1. Adjust the Preferred time for verification scan to go every 7 days. 
   2. Set a Frequency and Version interval that meets your organization's RPO and RTO.
   3. Lock this setting to apply to all devices.
5. Verify notifications for Mac full disk access (FDA)
   • Check that the CrashPlan app has notifications enabled for Full Disk Access (FDA) on Mac endpoints. 
6. Manage network resources
   1. Do not limit the network transfer bandwidth rate within CrashPlan.
   2. Avoid using CrashPlan's internal network limits in favor of Quality of Service (QOS) settings on your network infrastructure. If necessary, limit CrashPlan traffic on your network by setting it to a lower QOS setting. This traffic goes to specific *.crashplan.com endpoints. 
      • See IP addresses and ports used by CrashPlan.
7. Set Delayed Agent Updates
   1. Set a small Global delay for your organizations. 
      CrashPlan is typically Day 1 ready for all new operating systems. Each environment has it's own complexity, so setting a small global delay will help protect against any potential issues.
   2. For specific organizations, click Add Delay and set a longer delay period. 
      You'll need to build out your organizations based on your environment to accommodate this feature. Updates may contain critical security patches, so do not set delays too far in the future.
   3. Go to Announcements and click Follow to receive email updates when a new CrashPlan app version is released. 

Additional Resources

• CrashPlan Status Page
• What are some best practices for setting up and maintaining an endpoint backup?
• CrashPlan recommends following a 3-2-1 Backup Strategy, and you can learn more about how you can follow this strategy on our 3-2-1 Backup Strategy Guide.