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Version: 2.15.0

Compliance Guide for Data Orchestration for Dell

Introduction​

This page summarizes the compliance-relevant capabilities of Data Orchestration (Golden Copy): how backup copies can be made immutable, how data movement is audited, and how administrative access is controlled.

Backup Best Practice Alignment​

Golden Copy automates data sync from a PowerScale cluster to S3 compatible object storage, allowing customers to maintain a third copy of data off site in the cloud or on premises. This supports the 3-2-1 backup best practice: 3 copies of data, stored on 2 different storage technologies, with 1 copy kept off site.

Immutable Backup with Object Lock (Compliance Mode)​

Golden Copy can be paired with Dell ECS Object Lock to create backup copies that cannot be deleted, even by the root user, for a defined retention period.

  • Requirements: Dell ECS 3.6.2 or later, an S3 bucket with Object Lock enabled in Compliance mode, Golden Copy 1.1.6 or later with the Advanced license key, and Ransomware Defender 2.5.8 or later (for the zero trust integration described below).
  • The S3 bucket is created with Object Lock enabled, and a default retention rule is applied in COMPLIANCE mode with a configurable retention period (for example, 180 days).
  • Once written, locked objects cannot be deleted or modified until the retention period expires, protecting backup data even if the source environment is compromised.
  • Object retention and expiry dates on individual objects can be verified directly against the bucket.
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By default, Golden Copy's incremental sync mode deletes an object from S3 when the corresponding file is deleted from the source file system. With Object Lock in Compliance mode, deleted objects remain in the bucket as locked, undeletable versions until their retention period expires. This default delete-sync behavior can be disabled so that deleted files are retained as S3 objects instead of removed, which is recommended in most Object Lock deployments.

Zero Trust Integration with Ransomware Defender​

Golden Copy can integrate with Ransomware Defender through the Zero Trust API so that backup jobs (full or incremental) are automatically blocked if active threats are detected on the production data set, and resume automatically once the threat is addressed. This integration requires configuring the Golden Copy appliance with the Ransomware Defender (Eyeglass) IP address and an API token generated from the Eyeglass API menu. See Data Security's API Guide for token creation steps and licensing requirements, and the Integration Guide for the corresponding Data Orchestration-side configuration.

Dell ECS support for Object Lock/Compliance mode specifically is also noted at the storage-target level; other supported S3 targets vary in their support for versioning, retention policies, and Object Lock, and target-specific support should be confirmed in References.

Immutable Storage for Azure Blob Storage​

For Azure Blob targets, immutability is configured directly on the Blob container using Azure's own time-based retention policies or legal hold, rather than Golden Copy configuration:

  • Time-based retention policy: configured on the storage account container's access policy settings, specifying a retention period in days. Only one retention policy is allowed per container. A policy can be left unlocked during initial testing (so it can still be edited or removed while validating incremental schedules), but once locked, the policy cannot be undone and data cannot be deleted for the remainder of the retention period, even after the lock is applied.
  • Legal hold: unlike a locked retention policy, a legal hold (applied with a descriptive tag) can be removed at any time, making it suited to hold requirements that may later be lifted.
  • Because Azure retention is anchored to an object's creation date, incremental sync cannot update an object that already exists and is still within its retention/hold period. A copy error citing BlobImmutableDueToPolicy indicates the incremental job attempted to update a file whose corresponding object is currently locked — this is expected behavior for a modified file during the retention window, not a configuration fault. A legal-hold container returns an equivalent legalholdpolicy error if an object matching an existing (held) object name is uploaded again.
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Review Azure's retention and legal hold documentation and limitations in full before locking a retention policy — a locked policy cannot be reversed, and the underlying storage will continue to be retained (and billed) for the full lock duration.

Data Security Best Practices​

  • Authentication: Golden Copy authenticates to S3 targets using access and secret keys, which is the recommended best practice. For Amazon S3 specifically, AWS advises against using IAM roles for Golden Copy, since Golden Copy operates from an on-premises appliance and IAM roles are designed for use by AWS-hosted resources — access/secret key authentication should be used instead.
  • In-flight encryption: configuring a folder definition's target endpoint over HTTPS ensures data in transit is TLS-encrypted. The endpoint can use a self-signed or CA-signed certificate; certificate signing itself is external to Golden Copy and requires no additional configuration on either signing path.
  • At-rest encryption: provided by the target cloud or object storage provider, typically using provider-managed keys by default. Golden Copy does not support configuring customer-provided, object-level encryption keys — consult your target's own documentation on default at-rest encryption behavior.
  • Retention and versioning: both are configured at the bucket level following the target provider's own administration steps; Golden Copy requires no additional configuration to take advantage of either once they are enabled on the target bucket. Use separate buckets to apply different retention levels to different data sets.

Auditability of Data Movement​

Golden Copy provides monitoring and reporting that can serve as evidence of backup activity for audit or DR/backup-testing purposes:

  • Job history (searchctl jobs history) retains a record of every archive, incremental, and inventory job that has run, including job type, duration, and success/failure outcome, and can be filtered by folder or job type.
  • Detailed job reports can be exported per job (searchctl archivedfolders export --jobid <job-id>) to produce a file-by-file breakdown of successes and failures, which can be retained as evidence that a specific backup or restore operation completed as expected.
  • Archive Data Audit jobs can be scheduled to periodically compare the file system to the target S3 bucket and reconcile any differences, providing an ongoing evidence trail that the target copy matches the source.
  • Golden Copy is described as providing global monitoring of user activity with auditing and traceability of where data is moved, copied, when, and by whom, when used as part of a hybrid cloud data mobility workflow.

Role-Based Access Control​

Golden Copy supports role-based administrative access so that day-to-day copy job monitoring can be separated from full appliance administration:

  • The built-in ecaadmin user is the appliance administrator and is the only account permitted to run ecactl cluster operations (startup, shutdown, upgrades).
  • Additional administrators can be granted access to searchctl commands only, without the ability to perform cluster-level operations, by adding them to the built-in ecactl group or a custom group.
  • A read-only style Operator role can be created that is limited to monitoring commands only, for example searchctl archivedfolders list, searchctl jobs *, and searchctl archivedfolders stats *, without granting configuration change permissions.
  • Both local OS accounts and Active Directory accounts can be used for administrator or operator login, and CLI command sets can be assigned per group using searchctl settings groups add --name <group> --cmd <commands>.
  • Password policy and failed-login-attempt controls, and an admin-only login mode that blocks all non-administrator logins, are also available.

See Also​

  • References – CLI commands, folder definition parameters, and S3 target feature support notes.
  • Disclaimers – Licensing dependencies and known product/version limitations.