Step 5: Settings

Step 5: Settings

In the Settings page, you can configure the following:

    • Retention Policies
    • Storage Repository
    • Backup Encryption

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
    • By default, the storage pool configured for the backup job is the default repository(Default_Repo)
    • 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 the 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 in Vembu is a collection of every day's merge. If basic retention is enabled then every day's increments will be merged 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. Hyper-V Backup 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 merge 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 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 incremental will get merged to form a daily merge recovery point marked as (d).
  • Similarly, on the 4th day, the incremental of the 2nd day will be consolidated as a single restore point and so on for 5th Day and 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 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 of the specified day, all the daily merge backups from last Monday will be merged 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 First week 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.

Information Note:

  • 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.
  • By default, Retention will not be enabled. If enabled, Basic Retention will be selected.

Choose Backup Server

You can configure the backup server to which the backups must take place. Select the backup server from the drop-down list or click the Add Server option. Once done, click the Add option.

Encryption Setting

Backups configured from the BDR Backup Server can be encrypted with a user-defined password. BDR Backup Server encrypts each 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 password or encrypt the backup with a System Generated Password.
  • To create a new password, click Add Password. Provide a 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. Choose the password and click Next.

Information Note:

By default, Vembu VMware backup uses the system-generated password to encrypt backups even if Encryption is disabled. You can opt to a custom password for extended data protection and you will be required to provide it during recovery. Opting to the custom password will disable 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