Step 4: Backup Job Settings

On the Settings page, you can configure the following:

All these three settings are optional with each option set to the default action. For example:

  • Not enabling retention will result in forever incremental backups
  • The backup data stored in your repository will be encrypted using the system-generated password.

Configure Retention Policy

  • You can choose the number of backup versions to be retained in the storage repositories by selecting the retention count. Retention is aimed at optimizing storage utilization while adhering to your organization's backup policy.
  • There are two types of retention :
    • Basic Retention
    • Advanced Retention (GFS)

Basic Retention

  • Basic retention is a collection of every day's merge. If basic retention is enabled then every day's increments will be merged together to form a daily merge. By default, the daily merge will occur on the 3rd-day from the day you have configured your backup.

Working

For example, if you have configured a backup on Tuesday(day 1), then the daily merge will occur on the successful completion of the first incremental on Thursday (day 3).

Let us assume that you have configured "Keep Last 3 daily merge recovery points".

  • The backup is configured on day 1 with backup scheduled to run every hour. BDR Backup Server will backup the data at regular intervals based on the configuration scheduled.
  • When the first incremental of day 3 runs successfully, then every incremental that had taken place on day 1 will get merged as a single recovery point. This recovery point will be marked as a Daily merge(D).  
  • Similarly, on day 4, the increments of day 2 will be consolidated as a single restore point and the process will repeat for 5th-day and 6th-day.
  • As per the requirement, you need daily merge restore points of the latest 3 days alone. In this case, after the 6th day's successful incremental backup, the daily merged recovery point becomes 4 which exceeds the configured merge count.
  • The daily merge of day 1 will be merged with the daily merge of day 2 making it a single restore point. This process repeats regularly to retain the 3 daily merges restore points.
  • After the completion of a one-week backup schedule, you will have 3 daily merged restore points with all the latest increments(2nd,3rd, and 4th-day Merged points). This process will continue to maintain the latest 3 daily merged data available at all times.

Information Note: The Basic Retention option will be available if you are scheduling backup for hourly and daily schedules alone. If you want to schedule for weekly incremental, opt for Advanced Retention (GFS) 

Advanced (GFS Retention)

  • GFS otherwise known as Grandfather-Father-Son is an advanced version of basic retention which consists of multiple retention options for your backup data. The Multilevel GFS reduces the time taken to restore backed up machines and reduces the size of image files in the storage location. It helps in avoiding the formation of long chains of increments and allows you to meet the requirements of your retention policy.

GFS consists of three types of Merge -

  • Daily Merge
  • Weekly Merge
  • Monthly Merge

Scenario 1: Advanced Retention policy enabled only Daily merge

  • On the successful completion of the 3rd-days first incremental backup, the 1st-day increments will get merged together to form a daily merge recovery point marked as (d).
  • Similarly, on the 4th-day, the increments of the 2nd day will be consolidated as a single restore point and so on for the 5th-day and the 6th-day.
  • This process continues to maintain the daily merge recovery point.

Weekly merge

  • If you have selected only the weekly merge process then you will have a collection of weekly merge incremental data marked as (w)

Scenario 2: Advance retention policy enabled Daily merge and Weekly merge

  • If you have configured to merge the daily merged increments until Sunday.
  • The daily merge process takes place for the following week until Sunday. Once Sunday's first incremental backup gets completed successfully, all the daily merged incremental backup up to Sunday gets merged together as Weekly merge.
  • It retains the single time-stamp version of weekly merged data marked as (w).

Monthly merge

  • If you have selected only the monthly merge process then you will have a collection of monthly merged incremental data marked as (m).

Scenario 3: Advanced Retention policy enabled to retain Daily, Weekly and Monthly merge data

  • If you have selected Daily, Weekly, and Monthly merge, each merge process will get initiated on the user-specified day.
  • If you have configured Weekly merge on Sunday, after the first successful incremental on Sunday all the daily merge backups from last Monday will be merged together and marked as weekly merge(W).
  • The daily merge process will continue and next Sunday you will be having another weekly merge with all the previous week's daily merge.
  • With the completion of the Weekly merge, the merge of Daily and Weekly process will continue to take place until the configuration of the Monthly merge arrives on the user-specified day of the month (First Week Wednesday).

Information Note: You have configured the monthly merge to take place on the First week of Wednesday.

  • Once the incremental of First Week's Wednesday is completed, the monthly merge process will start. It will merge all the Daily and Weekly merge along with the increments that took place before the First Week Wednesday as a single Monthly merge point.
  • When you want to restore a month's backup data, this monthly restore point will be available for restore.

InformationNote:

  1. Daily Merge and Weekly Merge option is applicable for Run Every and Run Daily frequency. If you have configured Run Weekly for the backup schedule, you can select the Monthly Merge option alone
  2. By default, Retention will not be enabled. If enabled, Basic Retention will be selected

Backup Repository

  • The backup Repository management page lets you manage and configure drives into separate storage pools for storing your backup data. BDR Backup Server has a new file system that halts backup once a storage pool gets filled, you can expand your storage by adding new volumes to an already created storage pool.

Information Note: BDR Backup Repository repository management has a hybrid volume manager that supports scalable and extendable backup storage of different storage media such as Local drives, NAS (NFS and CIFS), and SAN(iSCSI and FC)

  • Backup Repositories are used to aggregate the space available from different volumes and utilize them as single storage for specific backups.
  • The backup storage that is configured before scheduling the backups will act as a Default Repository.

Information Note: You cannot trigger any backup until default storage is configured.

  • You can add new volumes to create a pool for storing your backups. 'n' number of storage pools can be created and there are no restrictions on the volumes that can be added to form a pool
  • Physical and network shared volumes can be combined together to form a pool. A single volume can be added to multiple pools
  • Backups configured from a standalone client will be stored in the default storage repository of the backup server
  • You can choose the storage pool for backups during backup configuration itself when the backup is configured from a client on the server

Steps to Add Backup Repository

  • In the Backup Repository section, default storage is chosen by default, you can change the storage by adding a new Backup Repository.
  • If the Backup Repository is already added during installation, the Available Space in Backup Repository for the chosen repository will be listed below the Backup Repository option
  • Add Backup Repository: To create a new Backup Repository, click the Add Backup Repository option. Enter a Name of Backup Repository and select any set of volumes from the list of available Storage Volumes. Enter the storage pool name, this name will be listed in the available storage pools for the backups

Information Note: Only [a-z][A-Z][0-9][ - _ ] characters are allowed in the storage pool name

  • Choose Volumes: In the choose volume section, you will have three sections namely: Storage Volume, Space Usage & Backup Location
    • Storage Volume - The list of drives added in the machine. Enable the check-box if you want to select the drive for a pool.
    • Space Usage - The total space and the available space of each drives in the machine.
    • Backup Location - The storage location or path for each Volumes where the backup data will be stored.

Information Note: It is not recommended to choose OS Partition as a Backup repository

  • If you select any of the Volumes in the machine, then its available storage space will be displayed at the bottom in Selected Storage Volumes' Free Space option. The Size of the repository is displayed accordingly with the number of volumes added to the backup repository. 
  • You can modify the default backup repository by enabling Set as the default storage option alongside the respective backup repository you wish to set as default. If a particular repository is made as a default backup repository then the backups that occur after this will be stored in the newly configured default backup repository. But, the increments of the old backups will be stored in the previously configured default backup repository.
  • Click Save once you have configured the backup repository.

Encryption Setting

Backups configured from the BDR Backup Server can be encrypted with a user-defined password. BDR Backup Server encrypts each and every block instead of encrypting the backup as a whole. This will secure your data using the AES-256 bit encryption algorithm.

Steps to add Encryption Password

  • To encrypt your backup, select the Enable Encryption check-box. You can add your own password or encrypt the backup with a System Generated Password.
  • To create a new password, click Add Password. Provide the password of your choice along with a password hint and click Save
  • The newly created password will be available in the drop-down list. With the help of the encryption hint, you can identify the required password.

Information Note: By default, Windows Image Backup uses the system-generated password to encrypt backups even if Encryption is disabled. You can opt for a custom password for extended data protection and you will be required to provide it during recovery. Opting to the custom password will disable the integrity check from being performed automatically. It is recommended to perform Quick VM Recovery periodically to ensure data integrity

Information Note: Password and its hint should not be the same to avoid security issues. The Password should contain at least a character, a number, and a special character [! @ # $ % ^ & *] .Encryption hint should be at least 6 characters and not more than 25 characters. Encryption hints are unique and no two passwords can have the same encryption hint

  • Once you have completed configuring the Encryption Password, click Save. Click the Clear option if you want to clear out the Password and Encryption hint.

Information Note: By default, the Encryption Setting will be disabled

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