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:- dates or ranges of dates of the backups to be archived. By default, the "Last Backups" of the selected backup types are archived. Alternatively, the user can pick the last backups over a specified last number of days, or backups that were performed in a specific start and end date range.
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one or more clients, along with the backup types to be archived. The user may also choose
one more local directories on the appliance to capture in the archive. The user can type the pathname directly, or if it is unknown,
use the browse box to find the directory to be archived and save it. Please use care when selecting local directories to be archived as the entire contents of these directories will
be copied to the archive media. At least one client and backup type or one local directory must be selected to create an archive set.
if you select a VMware vCenter or ESX server in the Navigational Pane, the list of clients will switch to a list of VMs that are on that vCenter or ESX server. In this way, you can pick and choose the VMs on each server you wish to archive rather than having to archive all of them at once through the special vCenter-RRC client. - media target of the archive operation. The available archive targets are the media currently connected to the appliance for an immediate archive (or the media that can possibly be connected to the appliance if a scheduled archive operation). You must click the media refresh button upon the the first entry into the archive subsystem, if you have not already checked for the connected media using the Media tab. Once the list of media is displayed, you must choose a single target for the archive operation.
- Overwrite - whether or not this archive set will overwrite the existing data on the media, or is appended to the existing archive sets. By default, the archive sets are appended to the media, which is also referred to as "append mode".
- Purge - whether or not the archive process will selectively purge older archive sets from the media if space is needed for newer archive sets. This option is used only when "append mode" is used, i.e., the Overwrite option is not selected. It is particularly useful if you have archive media that may be large but non-rotational in nature, such as an external SAN or NAS.
- Encrypt - whether or not the backups or local directories will be encrypted when written to the archive (if already encrypted, they will not be encrypted again). This option is not available if your system does not support encryption.
- Compress - whether or not the backups or local directories will be compressed when written to the archive (if already compressed, they will not be compressed again).
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.
- E-Mail Report - whether or not a report of the archive operations will be emailed to the user, and if a schedule, whether or not the schedule information will appear in the daily Applications and Archiving Schedule Report. It is recommended that you ensure this checkbox is selected (it is selected by default).
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Retention Period - the number of days to retain this set, i.e., another archive job will not write over this media. By default, this is 0 days, but the user can set it to a period of days, weeks, months or years.
Please take care when setting the Retention Period while using "append mode", as the Retention Period will shift with each set written to the media. For example, if the first media set has a Retention Period of 6 days, and five subsequent sets written once per day to the same media also specify 6 days, your Retention Period is 6 days from the date of the most recently written archive set, or 11 days from the date the first archive was written to the media. A typical use-case for "append mode" is to specify the Retention Period on the first media archive set as 6 days, whie setting it 0 days for the subsequent sets appended to the 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.
- SQL:
Backup Type Depends On SQL Transaction Log SQL Differential, SQL Full SQL Differential SQL Full SQL Full none - Exchange:
Backup Type Depends On Exchange Differential Exchange Full Exchange Full none
- VMware:
Backup Type Depends On VMware Incremental VMware Differential, VMware Full VMware Differential VMware Full VMware Full none
- Hyper-V
Backup Type Depends On Hyper-V Incremental Hyper-V Full Hyper-V Full none
- File-level:
Backup Type Depends On Incremental*** Differential, Master Differential Master Master none Selective none
***synthesized into a single Differential backup, then archived
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.