This would be a feature especially useful for Internet clients where you want to have a local image (and/or files) on a USB external disk in case local image recovery or large file recovery was needed (would eliminate a couple other feature requests).
I’d think this shouldn’t be too difficult to plumb in because you’d just be adding a 2nd backup location with it’s own path. Same code logic that is already implemented on the server.
Local locations could also be: 2nd internal drive/folder, external drive, mapped drive, smb/nfs network share etc. (any data path similar to the one configured in the UrBackup server)
Technically you can just do this already using some simple scripting to copy the data to another location. Like using rSync to copy the backup data to a second location? If you want to do a proper restore you’d also want it to rsync the urbackup server’s database as well.
This only works if the UrBackup Server is local I believe. A lot of my clients are Internet backups…so no backed up data to replicate…unless I’m missing something.
Silversword, most of my clients in one of my servers are also internet backup clients. They create backups in the backup storage like normal. You can just rsync the entire backup folders to another location if you wish to create a offsite backup.
The only thing to keep in mind is how to restore the image backups. The server keeps track of the backups, which are incremental etc in it’s database. If you wish to restore a server through the restore CD you have two options, a manual restore using:
Or two, through a UrBackup server, here’s where it gets tricky, you’ll need the database from the original server you backed up to, extract the relevant client data, and import it in the urbackup server you you wish to use for restore. This part requires some scripting to exact data from a SQLlite3 database, and import it in your current UrBackup server’s database. I’m using a modified version of this script to do that. In my case this works quite well for offsite backups:
Thanks for the detailed info. I think about 20 people on the planet is going to be willing to jump thru all those hoops.
I guess it CAN be done, but having a local replica of the UrBackup store that can be used as an alternative restore source is the point of this Feature Request
Guess i’m one of the 20 then . I work in IT support, we usually don’t have the luxury of asking for a feature and waiting to get it. Every software product has a drawback or two, I tend to try to work around them. Given the amazing flexibility of UrBackup as well as access to the source code it’s great thing i’ve gotten this far. Most backup products don’t have such an ability to interact with the software on these levels.
I’ve basically created a “portable” UrBackup server that has a script to mount and decrypt a iSCSI volume with the backups and a second script that will import the data of a backup in the database of this temporary server in case of a emergency recovery where I don’t have access to the data, but but to a UrBackup server to do a restore.
But sure, I wouldn’t mind if you could specify a extra backup location where backups get copied to after a regular backup operation completes. This does pose several questions though:
Does the extra backup storage need the same filesystem “limitations” as the current storage needs? Like the need to create symlinks? If so, CIFS storages wouldnt work.
Do you want to add bandwidth limitation to the copy to the offsite storage? This adds a ton of complexity to this simple request.
Do you need different a retention of the additional storage then the regular storage?
You are Same here…but I’ve been doing this 24 years. I CAN do it (great reference info from your notes thx) too. I learned about 10 years ago, I CAN do anything…but me having the time to do it is another thing. I manage over 600 machines across hundreds of different clients/networks behind different NAT’s/dynamic IP’s etc, so I don’t have the time to dedicate for ten’s of custom config management items.
Good point on the CIFS, but CIFS is network connections. For an external HDD, that should be able to replicate the same symlinks onto an external NTFS/XFS/btfrs file system.
I’m certain others will want more features, and if you have work to implement the feature request then thinking of an architecture that will support those in future is a good thing.
Fundamentally this feature request is about replicating any/all backups (file/image) to a 2nd local direct attached storage that will handle the symlinks. Why? Restoring 1TB of data from a backup from a locally USB attached/internal HDD is faster than an internet based server that is restricted to internet file transfer speeds.
I should be able to tell someone to plug a drive into a PC and configure a backup config. I should be able to select a local source when starting a restore option of file/image. KISS (Keep It Simple…)
This is one of the features I am interested in. I agree with silversword about a local restore or even a bare metal restore. I need the backup local to the machine, especially if it is remote, to do a bare metal restore. The only other backup solutions that provide this (that I have used) are Veeam and Acronis.
I think a more useful option would be server replication. Additional functions for replication interface could be to replicate latest backup to a USB drive… Client would need the ability to restore from USB or Local or replication(mirror) server…
This seems to be one of the most requested issues. how to move/backup/mirror the massive backup structure…
love the program… but it’s kind of funny to have a backup solution that it’s self does not have a reliable backup option.
To Directly address the feature request… the local computer would have to RUN a FULL SERVER not just the lightweight Client… I can see in some instances that this would be acceptable… but again that is solved with replication… run local server backups replicated to a master backup server that’s replicated to a backup of the master server.
I think that these issues are valid and would have a LOT more users using them if the BASE product would support it.
I have a use case for this kind of “local” backup on a phyisical drive connected to the machine and that would be a backup of the server itself.
I am coming from the Windows Home Server (WHS) world. The MAIN reason I had WHS was to have my client machines at home backed up easy and simple with the ability to do base metal restore when needed (first got a WHS in 2008).
Due to the fact that MS has left the WHS users to die any death without regard to their simple needs I first decided to bury the WHS OS completely after I learned about UrBackup!
The WHS2011 version was the first and only version of WHS that could back itself up to a locally connected drive seperate from the Client backups.
With the ability to have a “local” backup up path for clients as stated above the server could then be easily configured to backup the machines OS to a local and seperate drive than the clients.
I WOULD LOVE TO SEE THIS FEATURE and from what I read here so would others.
(To UrBackup staff: Please keep in mind that when anyone takes the time to contact you and pass on suggested improvements that they are only about 10% of those users who have that opinion most will NOT contact the creators and just hope things get better or move on to something else. So please listen very closely to the suggested improvements they, if implementable, will improve customer satisfaction and that will increase customer counts.)
Same here…but I’ve been doing this 24 years. I CAN do it (great reference info from your notes thx) too. I learned about 10 years ago, I CAN do anything…but me having the time to do it is another thing. I manage over 600 machines across hundreds of different clients/networks behind different NAT’s/dynamic IP’s etc, so I don’t have the time to dedicate for ten’s of custom config management items.