Archive Now

The archive now feature enables users to be able to quickly start manual archiving operations (also sometimes referred to as immediate archiving). While this feature is useful for creating a one-time archive, it is not recommended as the basis for the periodic archival of data for one or more clients.

Archive Options

When building an archive operation (or scheduling an archive operation), the selections and options include: Additional options include:

Note: By default, compression is turned off for tape devices. Compression through the RRC is not recommended as these devices typically have their own hardware compression. Turning on compression for such devices may cause the archive operation to take much longer.

At the bottom of the screen the user may either select the "Cancel" button in order to cancel the operation or the "Archive" button in order to perform the manual archival. In addition, the user may select the "Test" button to test the archive job for fit on the media. The system will report the estimated size of the archive operation as well as a most-likely archive size and based on that, let the user know if the archive set will fit on the currently-connected media.

Selecting a Date Range Strategy

When specifying the "Last x Days", "Custom Days", or "Last Backups" of backups in an archive schedule, the date range moves over time, but if the user chooses "Custom Date" and picks start and end dates to be archived, the date range is fixed. While using specific start and end dates is useful for immediate archive operations, it is recommended that this strategy not be used in an archive schedule as the same backups will be archived each time the schedule runs. "Last x Days" is a quick way of picking the last number of days in an archive, while "Custom Days" gives the user more granularities over the number of days of backups archived.

When using the "Last Backups" date range, the archive subsystem will capture complete last backup groups, e.g., for file-based backups, the last master backup and the most recent differential. Let's use as an example a backup strategy in which for particular client a master backup is performed on Sunday and differential backups on Monday through Friday. If the user schedules "Last Backups" archiving on Tuesday, this first archive set will contain the master backup from Sunday and the differential from Tuesday (assuming the Tuesday differential is complete prior to the archive set being written). If the Overwrite flag is not set and if the same media is used, when the next archive schedule for this client runs again on Friday only the Friday differential backup will be included in the set -- not the master, since it was archived the preceding Tuesday on the same media.

Using this same example, if the archive Overwrite option is set, or if the user changes the media, the Friday archive will include all of the master and differential backups in the last group, so it will include the Sunday master and each of the Monday through Friday differentials. For users who switch media during the week, a "Last x Days" or "Custom Days" strategy, in which the user selects the last specified number of days of backups, is recommended over a "Last Backups" strategy, as "Last x Days" or "Custom Days" archives capture all backups from the specified time range.

When using "Last Backups" archiving, the RRC will attempt to keep your backup type groupings intact. For example, if you select the backup type Differential to be included in the archive set, type Master is automatically selected for you. Likewise, if you de-select Master, then Differential is automatically de-selected. This is because Differential backups depend upon a Master backup, but not vice-versa. The same grouping relationship is enforced for application backup types as follows. For each group, the type is listed in the first column, with the backup types on which it depends in the second column.

When not using the "Last Backups" strategy, you can choose any or all backup types from the list for archiving.

Archival of Incremental Backups

When the user selects Incremental backups to be archived, the archive process will first create a "synthetic" Differential backup, and that Differential is written to the archive media. When viewing status or performing restores, you will not see Incremental backups as part of the archive set, but instead you will see the synthesized Differentials that encapsulate these Incremental backups.