Is it possible to have 2 classes of backups?

general discussion
1

Hi all,

Is it possible to have 2 classes of backups?

I.e.:

  • ClassA get file+image-based backups
  • ClassB get file backups only

Feel free to substitute ClassA to be ‘management’, ‘the bosses’, whatever. ClassB to be ‘normal workers’, ‘plebeian’, etc.

I’m trying to do it by using the ‘Separate settings for this client’ facility, but it doesn’t appear to be working. Under General Settings, I’ve got ‘Do not do image backups’ checked, and on a particular client, I have ‘do image backup’ checked. Do I have to enable image backups for all, then uncheck all ClassB? That seems fiddly when adding new client machines. Any constructive thoughts are welcome.

Thanks

2

I think it would be great to see group backup policies added to UrBackup, I second this for a future enhancement.

As for a current solution…

From my experience this will prevent UrBackup from doing image backups on any client whatsoever, so this needs to be unchecked.

Which version of the server are you running 1.3.x? It has an option in the web interface to disable image backups for each separate client (a little fiddly yes but works).
Its under the “Image backup” tab with the "separate settings for this client’ selected.

3

Thanks, uroni. Right – that’s where I separated out the settings for that one client already, hoping to get the opposite effect: default to 50 unimaged machines, but only image about 5.

If we have to go the other way and default to image+filebackup, that’ll be fine, but we’ll just have to remember to immediately:

  • break out everyone as an individual setting (at least on ClassB machines)
  • uncheck ‘do image backup’ on ClassB machines

Since urBackup seems to start a backup about 50 seconds after initially finding the server, is there a way to increase that time or not immediately start a backup, to allow us time to:

  • have time for the server to acknowledge the new client
  • breakout the client settings in the server
  • have settings propagate to client
  • then when all is right with the world, client starts backing up and we don’t have an unwanted partial image backup :)
4

Im wondering if this will work for you (ref see older post with comments from Martin… viewtopic.php?f=1&t=108)

Basically in general settings set the “Interval for incremental image backups” & “Interval for full image backups” to a negative value (eg -1) to disable the image backups at a global level. You should
then be able to override your 5 clients who want image backups in the individual settings.

Hope this helps

Edit: seems this might not work in current 1.3.2 version, but might be worth testing.

5

I may have done it…

  • in ‘general’, ‘image backups’ tab, set ‘Interval for incremental image backups’ to disabled. Save.
  • in ‘general’, ‘image backups’ tab, set ‘Interval for full image backups’ to disabled. Save.
  • in ‘general’, ‘server’ tab, uncheck ‘Do not do image backups’. This allows image backups to be done again. Save.
  • back in ‘general’, ‘image backups’ tab, set all the following options to the given values just for good measure:
    – Maximal number of incremental image backups: 0
    – Minimal number of incremental image backups: 0
    – Maximal number of full image backups: 0
    – Minimal number of full image backups: 0
    – Volumes to backup: (set to blank)
  • Save.
  • break out particular client (go to client name in dropdown, check ‘Separate settings for this client’)
  • go to ‘image backups’ tab and set the following as appropriate. The following are my settings. We only have 5TB of data for 50 people who create prodigious amounts of content… I’m OK with a 2 full images and 4 incremental images per high-value laptop:
    – Interval for incremental image backups: 7 – leave ‘Disable’ UNCHECKED
    – Interval for full image backups: 30 – leave ‘Disable’ UNCHECKED
    – Maximal number of incremental image backups: 4
    – Minimal number of incremental image backups: 1
    – Maximal number of full image backups: 2
    – Minimal number of full image backups: 1
    – Volumes to backup: C

This seems to be backing up only the high-value laptops so far. I will update this post if Bad Things Happen…

Thanks for everyone’s suggestions!

6

So close, yet so far…

It appears the two machines I’ve setup like this are running full backups over and over. But when I look in the logs, I get:

Errors 07.05.14 09:54 FATAL: Error writing to VHD-File.
Errors 07.05.14 09:54 FATAL ERROR: Could not write to VHD-File
Errors 07.05.14 09:54 Backup failed

Machine1: Windows 8.1
Machine2: Windows 7

Nothing special beyond that – but same result for each.

Not sure where to go from here…

7

Can you have a look into the backup server log ( http://urbackup.org/administration_manual.html#x1-530008.2 )? There probably are log messages which were not added to the client specific log.

8

Hi, uroni. PM sent with a link for the log file.

Thanks

9 
2014-05-07 16:37:58: ERROR: Writing to file failed
2014-05-07 16:37:58: ERROR: Last error: 665
2014-05-07 16:37:58: ERROR: FATAL: Error writing to VHD-File.

Code 665 - see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms681388(v=vs.85).aspx

[quote=""]ERROR_FILE_SYSTEM_LIMITATION

665 (0x299)  

The requested operation could not be completed due to a file system limitation.

[/quote]

Probably caused by a large compressed image backup. See http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ntdebugging/archive/2008/05/20/understanding-ntfs-compression.aspx for the limits of NTFS compression.

I have kind of anticipated this and implemented image compression in UrBackup Server 1.4 . You cannot mount the images directly then, though.

10

Ahhhh. So perhaps, since VHDs are not cordoned off in a subdirectory that I can mark as ‘‘don’t compress’’, I’d have to NTFS uncompress the ClassA users. This is assuming I’d like to continue to reap the benefits (!?) of NTFS compression for the file-based backups for ClassB users.

Right?

Further, I hope the 1.4 change is optional. One of the benefits of urBackup is being able to mount the VHD and pull things out of it. Up until this point, we’ve used clonezilla to do images, but you can’t walk said images. It makes it too difficult to grab data out of them. When I know I have a need to do things like that, I sometimes use things like macrium which will allow you to mount the compressed file as a drive. But that’d just be a wishlist item. :)

11

Yeah sure, can be disabled. There will also be a tool to uncompress them. On Linux you can also mount them directly, for Windows I’d have to write a driver.