Daily/Weekly Schedule to a Network Location

[UnknownDan]

Is this possible in 8.4.5r1? I would like to create daily backups with a weekly rotation and that seems to be only available if you're backing up to an external disk.

[Stuart]

Hi Dan,

Thanks for posting.

The reason for the differences is that a network location will not be moved or rotated - it's permanently connected and 'fixed' to the network.
Removable disks (such as external USB drive) are designed to be highly portable and this is the reason why it's rotated.

Can I ask the reason why you'd want a rotating scheme if you're backing up to a network storage location? There may be a better way to achieve what you're looking at doing.

[UnknownDan]

Perhaps I'm going about this wrong.
Ideally what I'd like to have is daily incremental backups so I have multiple restore points during the week, then a week1, week2 full backup.
I'd like a balance of multiple restore points and space considerations.

Hi Dan,

Thanks for posting.

The reason for the differences is that a network location will not be moved or rotated - it's permanently connected and 'fixed' to the network.
Removable disks (such as external USB drive) are designed to be highly portable and this is the reason why it's rotated.

Can I ask the reason why you'd want a rotating scheme if you're backing up to a network storage location? There may be a better way to achieve what you're looking at doing.

[Stuart]

Hi again Dan,

What I'd recommend is running a System Protection backup job to a data container.
More information on why I suggest using a data container is available from https://www.backupassist.com/education/ ... iners.html.

With current technologies, the traditional full/differential/incremental has kind of been replaced. The System Protection engine stores previous backups as VSS snapshots on the backup destination.
What this does is the latest backup will always look like a 'full' backup, however anything that has changed will get committed to the backup vhd(x) file and the older version of the data will be stored in the snapshot (it's essentially the same as configuring snapshots on a volume within Windows except it's all contained within your backup destination).

Once the backup destination becomes full, then the oldest snapshot will be removed so newer backups can be taken. With restore/recovery, you just select the date which you wish to restore from and it'll restore the file versions from that date in full. In comparison with the traditional methods, you'd need all incremental backup files (and load them up manually) since the last full backup to be available for the restore to be able to be completed.

For the weekly part of your solution, I'd recommend purchasing (a minimum) two USB hard drives and configure a second System Protection backup to write to these which are rotated weekly. You'd configure the job to run once a week and then take the drives offsite when you swap them. The reason for this is that you will gain redundancy in case your network location becomes unusable (damaged, natural disaster, stolen, etc.) then you'll still have backups available.

If you want to discuss further or looking for more advice, then you're more than welcome to reach out to our support team to discuss further. Contact details are found at https://www.backupassist.com/support/contact.html.

[UnknownDan]

Stuart,

My previous backup assist setup was using data containers. The issue is they grow to consume all the disk space and I've not seen a way to prune them.
Now I did have the use all available disk space checked, however I did so thinking Backup Assist would allow me some control to delete older backups.
Is there a way to setup a backup job to only hold the last N backups, or when configuring to use a data container, do I need to set a size limit?

[Stuart]

Hi again Dan,

That's correct. Once the vhd(x) file has been created, there is no way of being able to alter this (which comes from the file format and not a limitation with BackupAssist).
The only way to alter the data container in that way is to manually mount it through Windows and extend/shrink as you would with any other type of volume in Disk Management.
We don't generally recommend this as it could compromise your backups by either deleting or possibly corrupting them making them unusable.

The VSS service manages the previous backups and this is why there aren't any space management options for System Protection compared to other backup types.
It's best to set a specific size if you're not wanting to use the entire physical space available.