Server Backup
Server backup of Vinchin Backup & Recovery allows customers to take backups of entire Linux and Windows server’s operating system, specific disk(s) or specific volume(s) of the physical server.
Before creating a server backup job, make sure you had installed the physical backup agents on the target Linux or Windows servers, please refer to Agents for how to deploy agents for server backup.
Create Server Backup Job
To create server backup jobs, please go to Backup > Server Backup page. There are 4 steps to create a server backup job .
Step 1: Backup Source
Select the hosts you want to backup from the Group tree, expand the group until you see the hosts. Select the host(s) you need to back up, the selected host(s) will be added to the Select Host(s) column.
Click on the selected host(s), you can select or exclude the partition(s) or disk(s) from this backup job by unticking the front check box of the partition(s) or disk(s).
Check association: When enabled, checking a certain hard disk will simultaneously check its associated hard disks (such as RAID groups).
Notice
1. Windows servers only which file system type is NTFS support partition backup.
2. Windows servers which disk type is Dynamic does not support backup.
3. Windows disk state is offline or uninitialized cannot be backed up.
4. Windows servers must have at least 300MB free space in each partition.
5. Windows servers protected by security software may fail to back up.
Step 2: Backup Destination
On the Backup Destination page, you need to specify a backup storage to save your backup data.
Target storage: By default, it select the storage device with larger available space under all nodes. You can customize the storage device according to your needs.
Target Node: It will be automatically associated after the storage device has been selected.
When done selecting the backup storage, please click on Next button to continue.
Step 3: Backup Strategies
General Strategy
You can setup the backup Time Schedule, Throttling Policy, Data Storage Policy and Retention Policy.
To determine the backup window of this job, the Time Windows indicator can be a reference for you to determine in which time window the job should be scheduled.
In the Backup Method dropdown list, you can choose the backup mode of this backup job, you can configure the job as a Backup as Scheduled job, Manually Initiate job or an Once-off Backup job.
For a once-off backup job, the job will only run for once, and only full backup will be performed. You only have to appoint a time of when to start the backup job in the Set Time field.
For a Backup as Scheduled job, you can schedule full, incremental, differential and even forever incremental backups for the server backup job as per your needs.
By clicking on the + icon, you can configure when exactly to run the backup job on daily, weekly or monthly basis.
Usually, it’s recommended to run the full backups on weekly basis and run the incremental backups on daily basis.
For the throttling policy settings, it’s optional, only the highly efficient backup process will impact on the server performance, you can choose to configure the throttling policy to limit the backup speed.
Data Storage Policy including Deduplication, Compression and Encryption of the backup data.
By enabling Data Deduplication and Data Compression, you can save the bandwidth and storage resources for transmitting and storing the backup data.
By enabling Data Encryption, the backup data will be encrypted and then stored into the backup storage. A password needs to be specified to secure the data encryption, when creating a server restore job, password verification is required to perform server restore.
For the Retention Policy, it can be used to define how much/long the backup data to be reserved in the backup storage, you can either define the retention policy with Number of Restore Points or Number of Days mode.
If you only enable full backup for the server backup job, only full restore points will be generated, and to comply with the retention policy, the restore point exceeded the given number of restore points or number of days will be directly deleted.
For the incremental backup jobs, to comply with the retention policy, Vinchin backup server will merge the first full backup with the following incremental backup restore points to comply with the retention policy. If it’s a forever incremental backup job, Vinchin backup server will always merge backup restore points. If there are full backups to be taken regularly, then the first full backup will be merged with the incremental backup restore points between the first and the second full backup restore points one by one, when there’s no incremental backup between the first and the second full backup, the first full backup restore point will be deleted at the next run of the job.
For differential backup jobs, Vinchin backup server will delete the first differential backup restore point to comply with the retention policy, if all differential backup restore points between the first and the second full backup restore points had been deleted, the first full backup restore point will be deleted at the next run of the job.
Transmission Strategy
You can enable encrypted transfer,source side Compression, configure transfer threads and select transmission network for this backup job.
By enabling Encrypted Transfer, the transmission path between the physical server and Vinchin backup server will be encrypted to guarantee you data safety during backup process.
By enabling Source Side Compression, before transmission, compressing the backup data blocks according to the specified data blocks can help reduce the occupation of network bandwidth.
For Transmission Network, you can select a network to carry out the data transmission.
For Transfer Threads, you can define 1 to 8 transfer threads for a single server backup job to implement multithreaded transmission.
Security Strategy
WORM Protection: Once enabled for a backup point, WORM (Write Once Read Many) data cannot be modified or deleted before its expiration date, and its retention period can only be extended. The default protection period is 7 days, with a configurable range of 1 to 9999 days.
Notice
- Enabling WORM protection requires that the WORM functionality for the corresponding backup storage be activated.
- If forever incremental enable, WORM protection is not supported.
By enabling Malware Scan, backup data will undergo virus detection. After a backup job completes successfully, a verification job will be automatically generated to perform virus scanning according to the configured policy.
Enabling malware Scan allows configuration of scan threads and scan target.
By enabling Integrity Check, before executing an incremental backup or differential backup, the dependency points for this backup undergo integrity verification.
For incremental backups, verification is performed on the dependent full backup points and incremental backup points.
For differential backups, verification is performed on the dependent full backup points.
Advanced Strategy
For Increment, you can enable CBT to run server incremental backups for faster backup speed.
For Valid Data, you can configure Skip bad block backup to skip bad sectors on the disk and Backup valid data to reduce the backup data size.
For Retry, you can configure Network Retry and Operation Exception Retry to improve the fault tolerance of the system and increased the probability of ultimate success.
For Storage, you can set Data Shard File Size and Redundant Data Merge Ratio.
For Overload Protection, you can enable Ignore Node Resource Limits to bypass the node's resource limitations.
Scripts Configuration
Backup scripts before and after the backup process can be set for the backup source host.
Step 4: Review & Confirm
After completing the above-mentioned settings, you are able to review and confirm the settings in one screen. A job name can be specified for identification of the VM backup jobs, and by clicking on the Submit button to confirm the settings and create the backup job.