Backing up the backup

urbackupisgreat · March 15, 2021, 10:04pm

Hello, can someone maybe give me a tipp what would be the most effective way to secure my backups to a different location?

In my company network i have the urbackup server on a virtual linux machine running which is doing the backups to a NAS (QNAP), i want to automatically upload the backups to another nas/PC/FTP Server which i want to setup at my home. So i that have 2 sets of identic backups on different locations.

What is the correct way to do it? Is URBACKUP Server able to do such an automated task? To be explicit: I want to have the backup files on my NAS + my home location (NAS/SERVER/PC whatever) so in case I AM BURNING DOWN MY Company, i still have the backups at home (if i want to build it up again…)

Should i just use some functions in the QNAP NAS to copy/synchronize the files to another destination, or is there some kind of funciton in URBACKUP Server itself, so like setup another URBACKUP Server at my home and let my company urbackup and home urbackupserver communicate somehow?

Thank you for your tipps!

stevenh088 · March 22, 2021, 5:16pm

Any security you have is lost as soon as you transfer from your company to your house typically. However, if you still wanted to, you could possibly setup an external address and NAT for your server at your job and set it up as a client to your server at home. You would have to set it up as an internet client. I do not recommend attempting this either way.

simuuh · March 28, 2021, 6:31pm

Good question, I’m thinking about the same.

When my backup urBackup goes down, is it possible to set up a new urbackup instance, copy the files to the new “Backup storage path” and all is done? or do I need to backup something else, like everything in “usr/share/urbackup”.

Regards, Simon

MWubbema · March 29, 2021, 7:32am

Hi, just having a copy of the backup files alone isn’t enough usually. You also need the urbackup database if you wish to do any kind of automatic restore.

So if you make a backup of the backups you’ll be wise to also make a backup of the UrBackup database itself. Which is located here in Windows: C:\Program Files\UrBackupServer\urbackup or here in Linux: /var/urbackup.

I’d recommend you test your backup of the backup system before you actually need it and have never verified you can use the database and restore a database with it

simuuh · March 29, 2021, 8:46am

thanks for the hint with /var/urbackup

i will create a second instance of urbackup, copy the database to /var/urbackup and see how that behaves.

what would be another scenario to backup urbackup?

urbackupisgreat · March 29, 2021, 9:05am

When you check this option:

You just need to backup your “Backup storage path” since the database files are included there.

At the moment I am stuck on restoring the data to a new “urbackup server”, so that you just need to create a “restore cd” and launch it on a new machine to easily restore then from a backup.

If i will find out the proper way to do it, I will post it here.

urbackupisgreat · March 29, 2021, 9:10am

Proper way for me on QNAP: Use “Hybrid Backup Synch” for copying JUST the data of the “Backup Storage Path” from URBACKUP Server to an external device or FTP Server.

MWubbema · March 29, 2021, 9:26am

That would do it for the database, but it’s not the most recent backup of the backup server. It may be several hours or a day behind.

I’m personally using a modified version of this script to selectively read clients and backups from a source database and load them into a new database. This could be a new server you want to migrate the backups to or a temp server for a restore:

github.com

hmontoliu/urbackup_helpers/blob/master/urbackup_image_migration.sh

#! /bin/bash
# vim:ts=4:sw=4:et:ft=sh
# Migrate urbackup images between urbackup servers
# Created: 2017-02-21

# Copyright (c) 2017: Hilario J. Montoliu <hmontoliu@ebmproyectos.com>, 
#                     Fernando Brines <fbrines@ebmproyectos.com>
 
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
# under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
# Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your
# option) any later version.  See http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html for
# the full text of the license.

# source_ -> refers to the files/db to be imported into running urbackup server
# destination_ -> refers to running urbackup server

CLIENTNAME="${1}" # TODO: handle cli params and help stuff

# custom variables

This file has been truncated. show original

Bearded_Blunder · March 29, 2021, 11:35am

I might just toss in here, if you want to backup the backup storage itself, you really need to use a block-level imaging solution plus some sort of snapshot (VSS, LVM snapshots, or dattobd), file-level backups simply won’t handle all the symbolic/hard links correctly.

urbackupisgreat · March 29, 2021, 11:44am

Thank you for your thougths blunder, no my main issue is, that i want to be able to make a disaster recovery of my urbackupserver when my whole machine crashes.

So i should be fine with having a second copy of the “backup storage path” files and set up a new urbackupserver for deploying the backups then.
I am now stuck at setting up a new instance of URBACKUPSERVER with the backupdatabase files and backup files from my “old/crashed” one.

Very good to try this now since my hardware hasn´t crashed or anything and i am very unexperienced with all of this, so i have time to play around and try it until it works.

Bearded_Blunder · March 29, 2021, 12:01pm

If I were attempting to disaster-proof my backup server, I’d probably set up a second server, & do image backups of both the server & storage, with both the OS & storage set to be snapshotted as a group (Settings > Advanced > Volumes to snapshot in groups during image backups).

Even then if restoring I’d be prepared that I may have to restore the database backups to the server after an image restore as @urbackupisgreat pointed out the settings you’d need to have set to back up the database & run remove-unknown after doing so to remove stuff saved on the storage after the database backup had last run.

So far as I can see that ought to get what you’re after done, such a process is something I haven’t tested though as I personally lack sufficient storage to do so or test at present, and I couldn’t do so anyway, given that I run a Windows server & thus can’t image anything over 2TB since the storage I have doesn’t support images that size (ReFS not supported by my storage solution, & no .vhdx support in UrBackup) if your backup storage is a Linux filesystem you don’t hit that limitation though.

urbackupisgreat · March 29, 2021, 6:40pm

Finally, after another day in my live spend with URBACKUP, i want to share my noob knowledge with the community:

Main point: For disaster recovery, it is enough when you have a copy of the BackupFILES which Urbackup creates into the “Backup Storage Path”

You can mount the images via assemeling and decompressing:
UrBackup - Server administration manual
10.7 Assemble multiple volume VHD images into one disk VHD image

Second:
If you want to restore the images via the restore cd.iso but your Urbackupserver has gone crashed/exploded/fishing/missing:

Fresh install of Urbackupsrv
Copy Paste the files from the “urbackup storage path” (which of course, you made a copy of, before your server crashed from an external drive/FTP Server whatever)
Copy/paste Urackupsrv Database + files of Urbackup in the specific folder (linux var/Urbackup Windows UrbackupServer/urbackup) - so that Urbackupsrv has all the settings like your old one.
Check if you can reach the Urbackupsrv via your Internet Browser and if your Backups show up.
Launch Restore cd.iso on a new machine
Restore images

Important:
Fresh install of Urbackupsrv has to be the same (windows or Linux) like you had already running.
Always check option “Automatically backup UrBackup database” in settings of urbackupsrv, so you always have the database files in your “Backup storage path” included.

At least that worked for me when I was testing today for a disaster recovery.

Since i have Urbackupserver running on a VM Linux Machine which is located on a Microsoft HyperV Host, Backing up my VMs where urbackupclient is running on every vm, my worst case scenario would be that my hyperv Host gets currupted/goes on holiday/gets COVID and i can´t restore my Images. But with a Backup of your BackupFILES, it is no Problem to restore your Urbackupserver on a new machine or restore the Backups directly out of the .vhdz files.

Also this solution as posted before, sounds great, but it is too complicated for a noob like me:
(https://github.com/hmontoliu/urbackup_helpers/blob/master/urbackup_image_migration.sh)

Have a great backup day!

EDIT: Getting a lot of errors when trying to reassamble the images, i give it another try tomorrow…

urbackupisgreat · March 31, 2021, 9:15am

Finally got it right, tipp when restoring via decompressing the images: Make sure you make a copy of your original .vhdz file, so you can play around with decompressing/assembeling.
Also make sure you have the parent .vhdz file.

Conclusion: Train how to restore
When there is no hassle to do so, because when you really have a disaster you are more confident with doing so.

Best regards! … I ll be Back(up)