Is there a tutorial anywhere for moving UrBackup software to a newer server while hopefully retaining the backup history, etc? Is such a thing possible, and what would be involved in doing so?
I am about to move my backups from the initial test environment before rolling it out on a larger scale and now would be a great time to test the waters on what might be involved in the next upgrade down the line when it becomes necessary.
No document/wiki page for that yet, but it isn’t too involved:
That’s it.
The “copy the backup storage” is best done at block level (e.g. dd, partclone), because then the hard links aren’t a problem. Otherwise there are hard link aware tools such as rsync, which might take a while to copy them.
UrBackup can cope with a changed storage path, but:
I am on Server 2012R2, so my worry was about the hard linking, etc. I am not entirely certain if NTFS maintains that on a file copy operation? I assumed the rest of it would probably be straight forward, but I hate to assume.
The Explorer probably doesn’t. You can get rsync for Windows, too, but I don’t know if it handles the hard links correctly and edge cases like long file names. I would go for a block based migration anyway. Partclone also works with NTFS. See Clonezilla for something easy to use.
Robocopy perhaps? That could help keep downtime to a minimum.
I could not find any exact documentation, but it looks like robocopy does not preserve hard links.
Agreed. I have found another candidate. When I move to the new server, I will try it out and if it works I will report back with the results.
Still awaiting word from you. How did the server changing go? Any step-by-step info possible?
All the best,
I installed urbackup-server on new machine
On linux I copied the backup data over with rsync -aH /old/backup /new/backup, this takes care of hardlinks. If on windows you can use cygwin to install rsync. Then I jut copied the /var/urbackup to the same spot on new server which is were the configurations, database,identity keys are located on linux.
after the move I check that it worked by running urbackup-server and changed the settings to the new backup location in the web interface I stopped the service and then ran
start_urbackup_server --remove_unknown
http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/hardlinkshellext.html
That should work for you. It is a way to copy the directory structure pretty easily while maintaining all of the hardlinks.
That one looks great! Did you sucessfully move a Windows backup storage directory with that? If yes I should probably add a link to the FAQ/documentation.
Yes, it worked for the purpose. But, depending upon the size of your directory, etc., it can cause a fair amount of downtime.
Currently (as in, it is syncing a directory to an external hard drive right now), I am evaluating QtdSync for RSync functionality on Windows. It seems to work so far, but I am still completing the initial backup. I want to see how quick the differentials are before making a decision. It should be a better option for keeping a hot backup, it it works.
I have been attempting to use RoboCopy. There is an option “/sl” but it generated errors for which the copy would just hang.
I downloaded GRSync since I had used it before for another purpose.
I stopped the UrBackupServer service, made sure that “Copy Symlinks as symlinks” and “copy hardlinks as hardlinks” were both selected and let it rip.
It wasn’t long until I was getting errors about the filename being too long(91) and no such directory(2). Lots of these.
The WSBackups folder is at the root of both drives and both are formatted as NTFS.
I have a basic USB backup drive (F:) that runs the main backup and it is permanently attached to the server.
I have a removeable USB drive (E:) that they should be able to take offsite (placing another drive in its place so that the offsite backups can continue.
My Robocopy (without the /sl) starts on a Friday night and isn’t finished come Monday… that’s not going to work.
The GRsync throws a ton of errors.
Not certain where to go from here or if what I am trying to accomplish wouldn’t be better accomplished some other way.
It won’t work.
Try Link Shell Extension that I linked upthread.
Hi there,
I also use a Windows Server2012R2 but iSCSI for storing the backup data.
So, as I suppose, I only need to grap the urbackup Folder within the UrBackup (C:\Program Files\UrBackup\urbackup) root folder copy it to the new installed UrBackup on the new server, attach the iSCSI drives and start Urbackup. Is this correct?
I tested the above described steps and it’s working perfectly!
As mentioned I copied the urbackup folder from the old server to the new one, the I connected the iSCSI and started urbackup service.
Of course I used the same IP and domain name of the old server.
I tested an incremental file backup…its working fine!
Cheers
on my system, urbackup configuration is not in
/var/urbackup
but in
/usr/local/var/urbackup