Configuring Windows Disk Image Backup

Configuring Windows Disk Image Backup

You can follow the below steps to configure the Windows Disk-Image Backup;

Step 1: Adding Basic Job Details

Get started by creating a backup job by choosing Job Create Option, choose to Create Job without using a template if you want to create a backup from scratch, or choose to Create Job using an existing template if you would like to use an already created template for the backup job creation.

Backup Job Name

In the Backup Job Name filed, Provide a name for the backup job to identify it. The allowed characters in the backup job name are [A-Z][a-z][0-9][ – _ ]. Space and Special characters are not allowed.

Backup Repository

Choose Block storage or the Object storage as per requirement.

Immutable Backups (Only for Object Storage)

You have the option to enable this feature by checking the box, which will secure your backups as immutable for a specific duration. The duration can be specified and you do it for up to 999 day(s). The duration set will be applied to this backup job, which you’ll configure in subsequent steps. When configuring other backup jobs, ensure to adjust the duration according to your needs.
Immutable backup in the BDRSuite Backup Server is a backup strategy or system you can use where once the data is backed up, it cannot be edited, deleted, or tampered with until a predefined time period expires that can be set up as shown below in the image representation. This approach adds an extra layer of protection to the backup data, making it resistant to ransomware attacks, accidental or malicious changes.

Repository Name

After selecting the Backup Repository type, you have to select the name of the Block Storage or Object Storage repository to store the backup data. Click on the drop-down to select the backup repository name.

Job Description

In the Job Description field, provide a description for future reference. You can provide additional information related to this backup job in the description field.

Step 2: Select Disks/Volumes to Backup

Notes
Note: If you are configuring backup for the first time after adding the Windows host/workstation then you will have to install BDRSuite Image Backup Driver. 
  1. From the selected Windows Server/Workstation, disks and drives will be displayed with their available space, full space, and the type of disk. You can select the drives from the disk to backup. Click Next to proceed with the backup process.
  2. The drives(Volumes) that are already backed up will be greyed out and is not eligible for backup.
  3. If you have chosen drives from different disks for backup, the backup will progress in ascending order of disks. For Example: In a 3 disk setup, the backup progress will be in the following order: Drives from Disk 0 will be backed up first, followed by drives from Disk 1 which is then concluded by drives from Disk 2.
  4. You can choose the drives to be backed up by selecting the check-boxes. Once done selecting, click Next to proceed with the backup process. If you try selecting the disks. 

Mount Point

BDRSuite Backup Server assigns a mount point to the volumes that do not have volume Mount point or drive letter assigned. This is required as the volume without mount point cannot be scheduled for incremental backup. The Driver letter will be applied automatically on refreshing the page

To Know;

Windows Image Backup is supported for single-digit disks(Disk 0, Disk 1,…Disk 9) and two digit-disks, for example, Disk10, Disk11, and so on. It is recommended to include a boot partition (System Reserved) in the backup so that the backed-up image is bootable during the restore process. These disks/volumes cannot be configured for the backup process due to any of the below-mentioned reasons:
  1. If the volume has already been configured for backup.
  2. Disk is ReFS/FAT/exFAT formatted.
  3. If the volume is compressed using NTFS Compression.
  4. If the volume is NTFS folder mounted.

Step 3: Guest Processing Settings

You can enable the guest processing settings for the added Server/Workstation by selecting the checkbox corresponding to the same. After which you will be able to perform the edit.

Microsoft Applications

Application-Aware processing
You can configure Application-Aware Settings. This feature provides data consistency for the applications (MS Exchange Server, MS SQL Server, MS SharePoint Server, MS Active Directory).
During the backup process, the writers that are available will be checked if they are stable or not. Only if they are in a stable state the backup will proceed. This ensures a consistent database snapshot. A consistent database snapshot will be created by quiescing the applications using Microsoft VSS API.
Notes
Note: By default, Application-Aware Settings will be disabled.
Enabling Application Aware processing option gives you the following choices:
  1. Require successful application processing: Choosing this option lets BDRSuite Backup Server track the application consistency and triggers the backup process, only when all the VSS writers are in a stable state. You can stop the backup if any of the application writers say for Example MS SQL writer is not in a stable state or if the VSS writers were not processed successfully after the snapshot.
  2. Ignore application processing failures: This option, lets BDRSuite Backup Server trigger the backup job when it is scheduled, despite the success/failure of the application processed. It will not process the Application VSS writers and ignores the writer’s status. By default, we do not recommend this option as it may lead to data inconsistency of the applications in the backup.
  3. Disable Application-Aware Processing: The backup will proceed without transaction consistency of the applications.
Notes
Note: If any applications are running and you have selected the “Ignore application processing failures” option, then the application in the backup might not be consistent while restoring.
Log Truncation
Enabling this option lets BDRSuite Backup Server truncate the Exchange Server logs It purges and commits log files along with the .edb files. This avoids the disk space consumed by the application transaction logs. You can choose when to initiate this process by choosing one of the following options:
  1. Truncate the transaction logs: Choosing this option lets BDRSuite Backup Server truncate the Exchange & SQL Server logs after successful completion of the backup process.
  2. Do not Truncate Logs: Choosing this option lets BDRSuite Backup Server disable the truncation of the Exchange & SQL Server logs.
Notes
Note: It is recommended to enable the truncate logs option. Since the continuous growth of transactional logs leads to rapid consumption of storage space and the database modifications seems difficult when more log data is in the disk space on your drive.

File Exclusion

This option allows you to exclude system files that can be restored later using an installation CD/DVD that comes with your machine. Some of the excluded system files are as follows: io. sys, config.sys, msdos.sys, pagefile.sys, hiberfil.sys, swapfile.sys, autoexec.bat, boot.ini, ntdetect.com, bootmgr, ntldr, etc.
Notes
Note: Exclude system files will be enabled by default, you can disable them if required.

Step 4: Backup Job Scheduling

Backup job scheduling in the BDRSuite Backup Server allows its users to automate and set specific times for the regular backup of data. It enables the systematic execution of backup tasks based on predefined schedules, enhancing efficiency and reliability in data management.

Incremental Backup Schedule

During the incremental backup schedule, BDRSuite backs up only the changed block of the VMs since the recent full backup. You can schedule the incremental backup on any one of the following intervals.
  1. Manually: The incremental backup will not run automatically, you have to go to Backup > List Backup Jobs page and run the incremental backups manually.
  2. One Time: The backup will run only once at the selected time. No incremental backups will be processed after that.
  3. Every Few Hours/Min: You can specify a frequency and days to run the incremental backups. The minimum frequency to run the incremental backups in the Every Few Hours/Min option is 15 minutes. By default, all the days of the week are selected. If you don’t want to run your backup on all days, select only the days in which you want to run the incremental backup.
  4. Daily: In the daily option, you can specify the days and number of times the incremental backups should run on a particular day. You can run the incremental backups to run up to 5 times a day and you have to specify the time timing for every incremental backup.
  5. Weekly: In the weekly option, you have to specify the day, and when you want to run the incremental backups on the specified day. In the weekly incremental schedule, you can run only one incremental backup per day.
  6. Monthly: In the monthly option, you have to specify the months, and a day in the month, and a time in the selected day to run the incremental backup.
  7. After Backup: You have to specify the name of the already created backup job. So the backup job will run immediately after the selected backup job schedule is completed successfully.

Synthetic Full Backup Schedule

Running an additional full backup periodically is resource-intensive and requires more network bandwidth. In these situations, you can use the synthetic full backup option of BDRSuite as an alternative.
Instead of creating a new full backup periodically by creating a snapshot of the source VM, BDRSuite creates synthetic full backup by merging full and subsequent incremental in the repository without running an additional full backup. The synthetic full backup is an optional configuration, you can save the backup job without enabling the Synthetic merge.
Enable the synthetic full backup by toggling the slider to the right. Once enabled you will have to specify the scheduling for the synthetic merge to happen.
Specify the synthetic full backup frequency. You can specify the synthetic merge to happen on a weekly or monthly basis.
  1. If you have scheduled the incremental backups to run Every Few Hours/Min or Daily or After Backup, then you can set the synthetic merge frequency as weekly or monthly.
  2. If you have scheduled the incremental backups to run Weekly or Monthly, then you can set the synthetic merge frequency to happen only on a monthly basis.
  3. Synthetic merge is disabled for Manually & One Time backup schedules.
  4. If you are selecting the synthetic full merge to happen on a weekly basis, then you have to select a day and start time to run the synthetic merge. You can select one or more days in a week to run the synthetic merge.
  5. If you are selecting the synthetic full merge to happen on a monthly basis, then you have to select the month, select a day in the month and start time to run the synthetic merge. You can select one or more months in a year to run the synthetic merge.

Additional Full Backup Schedule

In some cases, you may require to create a periodic full backup weekly or monthly, or quarterly basis to adhere to your organization policy. Also, it is not a best practice to configure a backup job with one full backup followed by forever incremental backups. BDRSuite’s Additional full backup option allows you to comply with your requirements by creating a full backup periodically.
The additional full backup resets a backup chain and the subsequent incremental are based on the recent full backup. Running additional full backups frequently may sometimes lead to storage space consumption, you can automatically delete the older full backups chain by setting the appropriate retention policy for the additional full backups or deleting it manually when required.
Enable the additional full backup by toggling the slider to the right. Once enabled you will have to specify the scheduling for the synthetic merge to happen.
Specify the Additional full backup frequency. You can specify to run the additional full backups on a weekly or monthly basis.
  1. If you have scheduled the incremental backups to run Every Few Hours/Min or Daily or After Backup, then you can set the additional full backups frequency as Daily or Weekly or Monthly.
  2. If you have scheduled the incremental backups to run Weekly or Monthly, then you can set the additional full backups to run on a Weekly or Monthly basis.
  3. Additional full backups are disabled Manually & One Time backup schedules
  4. If you are selecting the additional full backups to run on a daily basis, then you have to select the start time to run the additional full backups.
  5. If you are selecting the additional full backups to run on a weekly basis, then you have to select a day and start time to run the synthetic merge. You can select one or more days in a week to run the additional full backups.
  6. If you are selecting the additional full backups to happen on a monthly basis, then you have to select the month, select a day in the month and start time to run the additional full backups. You can select one or more months in a year to run the additional full backups.

Advanced Schedule Settings

The Advanced Schedule Settings allow you to specify the Backup Window time and Backup Validity for your backup job.
Backup Window
If you don’t want the backup run at a specific time interval, then you can specify it in the backup time window. The backup window prevents the backup job from running during peak production hours and ensures there is no unwanted overhead in the production environment. Select one of the available options to set up the backup window for your backup job
Use Global Settings: Selecting the‘ Use Global Settings’ option will apply the Backup Window setting of your backup server to this backup job. You can set up the global backup window settings for your entire backup server at Backup > Configure Backup Settings > Backup Window.
In case, if you are selecting the ‘Use Global Settings’, but if global backup window settings are disabled for your backup server, then the job will run as per its schedule
If you are modifying the Global Backup Windows settings later, it will affect all the backup jobs that are selected with ‘Use Global Settings’
Use Custom Settings: On selecting ‘Use Custom settings’, you have to specify the start time and end time for the window. The backup job will not during the selected time interval. You can also specify the applicable days for the backup window settings such as Mon-Fri or All days. Selecting the ‘Use Custom settings’ will override the global backup window settings.
No Preferences: Selecting ‘No Preferences’ will override the global backup window settings and the backup job will run as per the schedule.
Backup Validity
Set the validity for your backup job by specifying the start date and the expiration date. The Backup job will start to run only after the start date.
If you want a backup job to start to run later, for example, 5 days later from the day you have created the backup job, then you can specify the start date of the backup job accordingly. The expiry date is optional for a backup job, if the expiry date is set the incremental backup or additional full backup does not proceed after that.

Step 5: Backup Job Settings

Retention

Basic Retention
Version Based Retention
If you are selecting the version-based retention for the incremental backups, then you have to specify the number of versions to be retained. You can select from 1 to 999 versions.
Notes
Note: For example, if you configure hourly incremental backups and select ‘10 versions’ to retain, BDRSuite Backup Server will retain only the last 10 hours of recovery points of the backed-up machine.
Day Based Retention
The “day-based retention” feature in BDRSuite allows users to specify the number of days that incremental recovery points should be retained. This means that users can select a specific number of days, such as 14, to retain 2 weeks of recovery points. Additionally, the “Minimum version(s)” option can be selected to avoid losing recovery points due to backup failures.
This ensures that the BDRSuite will retain the minimum number of recovery points specified in the “Minimum version(s)” field, even if the backup job does not run for a certain number of days.
Without this option, the BDRSuite would remove all incremental recovery points. By default, the “Minimum version(s)” option is set to 3 versions, but it can be increased as needed.

Info
An example of how this feature might be used is as follows:
A user sets up the BDRSuite to perform hourly incremental backups. They then select the “day-based retention” option for the incremental backups and specify that they want to retain 14 days of incremental recovery points. The BDRSuite then begins performing hourly incremental backups and saves each recovery point for 14 days, as specified by the user. In total, the backup server retains 336 recovery points (14 days x 24 hours per day). When backup jobs are running successfully, the exceeding recovery points will be removed according to the “day-based retention” option. So, on the 15th day, the first day’s incremental data will be merged with the full backup and the incremental backup’s timestamp will be removed. However, if the backup job does not run for the next 15 days, all incremental recovery points should be removed according to the “day-based retention” option. But, If you have updated to keep “Minimum version(s)” as 24, as per the “Minimum version(s)” configuration, the BDRSuite will still retain 24 recovery points (one day’s worth of incremental timestamps). This ensures that a certain number of recovery points are always available, even if backup jobs are not running as expected.
GFS Retention
GFS stands for Grandfather, Father, and Son based retention that allows you to retain the recovery points of the backup jobs for long periods like weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly. Under the GFS retention, the weekly backups are referred to as “sons,” monthly backups as “fathers,” and yearly backups as “grandfathers”. BDRSuite Backup Server marks the GFS flag against the Additional full or Synthetic full backups or incremental backups.
There are two types of GFS retention; 1. GFS with Full Backups & 2. GFS with Incremental.
Notes
Note: If you need to enable GFS retention, it is necessary to choose either one of the options in basic retention, as GFS retention works in combination with basic retention.
 GFS with Full Backups
The GFS restore points are created using additional full or synthetic full backups.
The additional full backup or synthetic full backups are marked as weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly GFS recovery points.
So, you should have already configured either the synthetic or additional full backup for the backup job.
You can either choose weekly/monthly/quarterly/yearly or any combination of GFS recovery points.
Info
For example, If you want to retain 4 weeks, 12 months, 4 quarters of GFS recovery points, the available full backups in the backup repository will be marked as per the GFS retention schedule. So, based on this configuration, 20 GFS full recovery points will be retained at the end of the year.
GFS with Incremental
The GFS restore points are created using incremental backups without including additional full or synthetic full backups.
The incremental backups are marked as daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly GFS restore points.
On the successful completion of the 3rd-day’s first incremental backup, the 1st-day increments will get merged, to form a daily GFS recovery point. 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 GFS recovery points.
Similarly, if you choose weekly/monthly/quarterly/yearly backups, the incremental backups from the previous week /month /quarter /year will be merged and a GFS recovery point will be created.

Encryption

You can encrypt all the backup data for an added protection. When encryption is enabled all the backup data blocks are encrypted using the AES-256 bit encryption algorithm both during the transfer and at the storage. For encrypting the backup data, you can use the system-generated encryption key or use a custom encryption key.
  1. By default, encryption is disabled for all the backups jobs, you can slide the toggle to the right to enable encryption for your backup data.
  2. Select ‘Use System Generated Encryption Key’ if you want to encrypt all your backup data using BDRSuite’s automatic System Generated Encryption Key. You do not need to specify any during the recovery or editing the backup job later.
  3. Select ‘ Use a Custom Encryption Key’ if you want to encrypt all your backup data using your own Encryption Key. You can select the already created encryption keys that are created for other backup jobs from the drop-down list or you can
  4. Add a new encryption key by providing the encryption password, encryption key hint.
  5. After providing the password and hint for the encryption key, click on the Save button.

Step 6: Review Configurations

The last step in your backup process is to review the configurations you have selected. Enter a Backup Job Name. BDRSuite Backup Server supports creating multiple backup schedules each with its own configuration. The backup job name will uniquely identify the backup. While restoring your backup data, you need to choose the data to be restored using its schedule name.
You have the option of running the backup job immediately after saving the backup. If you want your backup job to be triggered immediately after you save the backup, irrespective of the backup schedule you have configured, select the Run this job immediately after the saving option.
Click Save the backup option once all the configurations are reviewed. On saving the backup, you will be prompted to confirm to proceed further. Click OK to complete the backup progress

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