Question

Creating multiple bkf files in the same folder with ntbackup

Asked by: northcide

I have a client who backups to a NAS and would like to have a full backup on Saturday and Incrementals done 5 days a week on a SBS2003 server.

The full backup is easy, I use sbs backup and backup every saturday: it works great.  

My problems is the incrementals.  I am using ntbackup to pull the incrementals but i am only able to store one incremental bkf file total.  I'd like to have ntbackup save 5 files before it starts to overwrite, like SBS does.  

Is there a way to do this without having to create a separate backup job for each day and store incrementals to separate folders?

I also have vertas backup exec 9.1 available to me, but to date I am unable engineer a solution to accomodate the client's request with this software either.  



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Asked On
2008-08-04 at 07:48:29ID23619176
Tags

microsoft

,

NTBackup

,

Backuping to file on Nas

,

Versioning

Topics

SBS Small Business Server

,

Backup Exec

,

Removable Backup Media

Participating Experts
1
Points
250
Comments
5

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Answers

 

by: TechSoEasyPosted on 2008-08-04 at 20:26:34ID: 22157936

It doesn't really make sense to have five separate incremental backups stored on the same destination media.  If you are backing up to a NAS, then you should configure the incremental backup to appends each day's changes to a single backup file.

The reason that the SBS Backup keeps 5 files and then overwrites is because FULL backups work differently than incrementals.

You should be aware that your incremental backup will not be backing up Exchange though... which is why I generally recommend that you don't use them.

Why don't you just run the full SBS backup each night?  What are you really trying to achieve here?

Jeff
TechSoEasy

 

by: northcidePosted on 2008-08-05 at 06:43:23ID: 22160754

Thanks for the quick reply Jeff,

I would go with a full backup every night but the nas doesn't have the space and the client isn't going to spend any additional monies to upgrade.  

What they want to acheive is the ability to restore data to anypoint in the past 3-4 weeks.  

Exchange is backed up each saturday with the sbs backup, the incrementals are only for user/project data.

If I set the incremental backup to append, will I have the option to select a file's changes as of , let say tuesday, if different changes were backed up thursday?  Or will it only give me the changes as of athe last backup?


 

by: TechSoEasyPosted on 2008-08-05 at 13:25:57ID: 22164843

First of all... what data are you wanting to back up?  Because if its documents and other files, you should be running Volume Shadow Snapshot Service to create twice-daily snap-shots of all server shares.  This is easily enabled from the SBS  Server Management Console > Backup > Modify Storage for Deleted Files and E-mail.

You can configure as much retention of users' shared folders as you like depending on available disk space on the server.  Normally, the default setting of 10% of disk space will retain about 30 days worth of versions.  These are then easily restored by users themselves by right clicking any shared folder and selecting Properties > Previous Versions tab.  (This needs to be done from a workstation, not on the server itself unless you browse to the file using Network Places instead of My Computer).  I've attached an image of what this looks like.

Now, as for your full backups... I'm not really sure what type of NAS you are using, but generally I suggest that SBS backups be done to USB hard drives.  You can get 250GB small form factor (2.5") drives for less than $100.00 these days, and using a couple of those so that you can take the backup off-site is certainly less expensive than taking the chance of losing important data.

For example:  http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3994389&CatId=2420

In my opinion, there really is no reason to do incrementals based on the scenario you describe.

Jeff
TechSoEasy

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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