Managed Backup Service Agent 6.30 for Microsoft Windows. Best Practice Guide

Transcription

1 Managed Backup Service Agent 6.30 for Microsoft Windows Best Practice Guide

2 Table of Contents Important Note... 3 Anti-Virus Tuning... 4 Open File Agents... 4 Retentions... 4 Job Creation... 5 Recommended Maximum Task Size... 5 Naming Jobs... 5 Job Contents... 5 Encryption of Jobs... 6 Excluding file extensions... 6 File Exclusion... 7 Folder Exclusions... 7 Job Scheduling... 8 Microsoft SQL Backup Jobs Microsoft Exchange DR Backup Job Microsoft SharePoint Server Plug-In MBS Agent Directory Backup... 13

3 Important Note Please check the download website on a regular basis to ensure you are using the latest software: You will also be informed of any new software releases by means of a message header on the daily report, an example is shown below, these will be listed for a period of 30 days. Latest Agent Release (6.30) is now available for download from

4 Installation Volume Size When installing the Managed Backup Service Agent, ensure that at least 1 GB is free on the Installation Volume. Note, the actual installation size is not 1 GB, but there are index files (.dta and.dtx files) that are generated when backups are run. Depending on the size of the server and the number of files tracked, these index files can grow in size. Indexes are only stored for the 2 most recent safesets, but it s still important to leave significant headroom, especially if the user chooses to install on the system volume. Anti-Virus Tuning If Anti-Virus software is running on the client machine, it is recommended that Real- Time Protection be tuned to only scan on Accessed vs. Modified and Accessed. MBS Agent should also be excluded from Anti-Virus Scans. Performing this operation has proven to increase backup speeds. Without doing so, Anti-Virus is spawned on all files that MBS scans for changes and slows down performance. If you have installed the open file agent for MBS then you must make sure that the OFM is excluded from the anti-virus also Open File Agents Open File Agents should be used on any system with critical files that might be in an open state during backup. This includes file servers, database servers, and non-exchange mail servers. If you are unsure if your server contains open files, install Agent without the Open File Agent and perform a backup. Review the logs to identify any open files. If the client identifies mission critical open files, install an Open File Agent to be able to capture those files. Retentions Retention Name is the name given to the retention policy, Days Online is the number of days the minimum number of days the backups will be kept online and Copies Online specifies how many copies of the data will be held online at any one time. To mirror a tape based Monthly, Weekly, Daily backup rotation, the following retention policies below, can be used as a guideline: Name Retention (In Days) Online Copies Daily 7 7 Weekly 31 5 Monthly The above retention policy can be scheduled with a daily backup using the daily retention runs Monday to Thursday, with a weekly backup using the weekly retention, running every Friday. On the last Friday (Or last day of the month), a Monthly backup could run, using the Monthly retention. While in the above example, it looks like 7 copies will be held online for each retention, data will not be expired until both the retention AND the copies criteria are both met. So for the daily retention, a backup done on the Monday will not be removed until it is 7 days

5 old, a backup done on the Tuesday will also be kept for 7 days. So for the above retention settings on backups done Monday to Friday, the Monday to Thursday backups would be replaced each week, with each Friday s backup being kept for a month, with the month end backups would be kept online for a year. Customised retention settings can be created for individual tasks, as well as different schedules assigned to different MBS agents, and can be configured for specific data retention needs Job Creation Job creation is fairly straight forward see Managed Backup Service Quick Reference Guide, but you should be aware of some of the features, recommended naming, sizing conventions and files extensions to exclude. Recommended Maximum Task Size The amount of data to be backed up by a MBS Job should not exceed 200 GB. If the amount of data on server should exceed 200 GB, multiple tasks should be created to backup the user s data. Naming Jobs Job names should be unique. This allows the Agents to perform Restore from Another Computer. This functionality would be hindered if the user were to call all of their backup tasks Full, for example. Naming the job something like the job type makes identification easier, IE naming the task Exch_DB when the job is an Exchange Database backup. Note: It is not recommended to use server name as part of the task name. Job Contents To ensure recoverability from a disaster, all system data and client proprietary data should be backed up. MBS, Anti-Virus and OFM program folders should be excluded from backup selections. On a Windows system, the following should be backed up in the very least: Documents and Settings Program Files Windows or WinNT System State + Any Proprietary Software installed by the client When the user is creating the job and chooses to backup data files, with Data Files highlights, choose Options. On a Windows System, ensure that Backup Files Opened for Write is checked. This allows files that are opened in Shared-Write mode to be backed up. This does not allow open databases to be backed up. If the client needs to backup an open database, choose to install the appropriate plug-in. If a 3rd party backup solution is to be used in conjunction with MBS, ensure that Suppress Archive Bit is also checked. This allows the 3rd party backup solution to be able to properly detect files that have changed since its last backup. On Novell Systems when selecting to backup Data Files, choose Options, ensure that Support Netware File Compression is checked.

6 Encryption of Jobs There are 2 levels of encryption within MBS, 'Over the wire' encryption, where the line between the agent and the vault is encrypted, and file encryption, where the data itself is encrypted by the MBS Agent. Both are optional, but over the wire encryption is enabled by default when the agent is registered with the vault, while file encryption has to be set up with each backup task. Encryption between the MBS agent and the vault can be disabled on the vault registration wizard, or on the vault connection properties pages. However, this is enabled by default, so that there should always be a level of encryption on all backup tasks. It is strongly advised not to disable this, especially if the backups are running over the internet. The type and level of encryption can not be changed. The second level of encryption is set on the backup task, and encrypts the data itself. This requires an encryption key to be entered, and an encryption type to be selected. If using encryption, AES 128 bit is reported to be the fastest. Encrypting data can affect performance of a backup because of the small amount of overhead. Choosing AES 256 can cause the backup to be up to 3 times slower. Changing encryption methods or password after initial backup forces a reseed of client data. You many choose not to encrypt your data because the agent is backing up over a private WAN or depending on your data if it is backing up over the public internet your may choose to encrypt the data. When performing a restore from an encrypting backup, the user will be required to supply the encryption password used. intechnology do not hold copies and can not recover lost encryption keys. If the user loses the password, MBS will NOT be able to retrieve it for them and the client will NOT be able to restore their data. Excluding file extensions When creating a file system backups, it is advisable to ensure that files that are not required (i.e. not business critical), are excluded. Exclude extensions that are not required, for example:- *.tmp - temporary files *.cab - windows install files *.dmp - Screen or Memory Dump You might want to consider also excluding the following files: *.aif Audio Interchange File *.bin Binary File *.arj Compressed Archive *.bmp Windows OS/2 Bitmap Graphics *.asf Advanced Streaming Format *.lnk link files *.asx Advanced Stream Redirector File *.dll Dynamic Link Library *.dmp Screen or Memory Dump *.hlp Windows Help File *.exe Executable File *.jpg JPEG/JIFF Image *.gif Graphic Interchange Format *.midi Musical Instrument Digital Interface *.log Log File *.mov QuickTime Video Clip

7 *.m4p Protected AAC File *.mp3 MPEG Audio Stream, Layer III *.mid Musical Instrument Digital Interface *.mp4 MPEG-4 Video File *.mpeg MPEG 1 System Stream *.mpg MPEG 1 System Stream *.obj Relocatable Object Code *.psd Photoshop Format *.ogg Ogg Vorbis Codec Compressed *.rm RealMedia Streaming Media Multimedia File *.ram RealMedia Metafile *.rmvb RealVideo Variable Bit Rate File *.rar WinRAR Compressed Archive *.wma Windows Media Audio File *.tar Tape Archive File *.wmv Windows Media File *.wav Waveform Audio *.zip Compressed Archive File *.tif Tagged Image Format File *.bkf Microsoft Backup File *.tmp Temporary Files *.cab windows install files File Exclusion Files that are not required and should always be excluded are: pagefile.sys Hiberfil.sys Folder Exclusions Exclude folders that are not required, for example:- $:\temp $:\%windir%\temp $:\recycler $:\System Volume Information $:\%windir%\system32\config $:\i386 $:\%windir%\$ntuninstall******** MBS program folder Exclude any data/directories that are being backed up via a Plug-in, such as Exchange or SQL, for example:- $:\Program Files\Exchange\Data - MS Exchange default location $:\Program Files\MSSQL\Data - MS SQL default location Certain system databases cannot be backed up whilst in use i.e. WINS and DHCP. for example:- $:\%windir%\system32\wins $:\%windir%\system32\dhcp $:\%windir%\inetpub (iis directory) Exclude these folders from the file system backup and create a separate task (that also includes the System Sate/Service DB s) for just these folders. You would need to include a custom command in the schedule to run a batch file that stops/starts these services as required to ensure a consistent backup.

8 Another alternative is to install the OTM/OFM option (licensed option) and backup as part of the file system backup It is recommended to create a separate backup task for the system state which includes the following: Com+ Class Registration Database Registry Boot Files Performance Counters IIS Metabase Active Directory RSM Database (optional) Event Log (optional) The schedule for the system state can be less frequent i.e. only daily backups 1. If Open File Manager (Windows) or Open Transaction Manager (Novell) is being used, stagger the backup tasks so they do not overlap each other. If one OFM/OTM task starts while another is running, both will fail due to the way in which OFM/OTM manage the cache. Job Scheduling If another backup solution is being used along with MBS, backups should be staggered in that the backups do not overlap. This will increase performance, but if overlapping should occur, backups should still be able to perform except slower than if separated. If an Open File Agent is used, such as Open File Manager or Open Transaction Manager, backups should be run independently as to not overlap. Overlapping these types of backups will cause the backup to fail. This is due to the caching mechanism of the Open File Agents. There are 3 options for setting up schedules, Weekly, where you can specify which days of the week a backup will run, Monthly, where specific days of the month can be chosen and Custom, which is used when the backup cycle and days when the backup should run can vary. Daily The daily backup allows you to select the days of the week that the schedule will run, by checking or un-checking specific days of the week. The start time specifies when the schedule will start.

9 Monthly The monthly backup uses a command window, where days of the month are listed. These are the days in the month that a backup should run, and can be a single date, a list of dates, or LAST to specify that the backup should run on the last day of the month. For example, entering 28 will make the backup run on the 28 th of the month, 1,7,21,28 will make the backup run on the 1 st, 7 th, 21 st and 28 th of the month. Custom To run a backup on, for example, the last Friday of the month, the custom schedule option must be used. This uses a command format similar to the CRON command format used in Unix. The command is broken up with a /, and the format is start minute/start hour/day/month/day of week. The permitted values are: Start Minute 0 to 59 Start Hour 0 to 23 Day 1 to 31 Month 1 to 12 Day of week 0 to 6 (Where 0=Sunday) Values such as day, month and day of week can be replaced with *, which means every time. LAST, as with the monthly backup, means the last day of the month. For example, to create a custom schedule starting the backup at 23:00 on the last Friday of the month, the format would be: 00/23/25-31/*/5 This will start a backup on any Friday falling between the dates of the 25 th and 31 st on any month at 23:00. Examples First Saturday of the 23:00 0/23/1-7/*/6 0/23/ - 23:00 time backup task runs /1-7/ - first Saturday could fall on any day between 1 to 7 /*/ - month is set to all by using * /6 - Saturday is represented by day number 6 Last Saturday of the 0/18/25-31/*/6 0/18/ - 18:00 time backup task runs /25-31/- last Saturday could fall on any day between 25 to 31 /*/ - month is set to all by using * /6 - Saturday is represented by day number 6

10 Prioritising Schedules Schedules are prioritised by the order in which they appear in the schedule list. To give week end and month end schedules priority over the daily schedules, they must appear above the daily schedules in the list. For example, a schedule list should display monthly at the top, weekly in the middle, and Daily at the bottom. The top of the schedule list takes precedence over the bottom of the list. To give a schedule a higher priority, select the schedule you want to prioritise, and click on the Move Up button on the right of the window. This will move the selected schedule one place up in the list. Continue clicking on the Move Up button until you have the schedule in the position you want in the list. If you find you have prioritised the selected schedule too high in the list, use the Move Down button to move the schedule further down the list. If you are running both DR (Database) and MAPI (Mailbox) tasks on an exchange server, it is advised that you prioritise the DR task schedules above the MAPI task schedules to ensure that DR backups take priority. In the case of a disaster, the DR backups will be required to get the Exchange server(s) back up and running as soon as possible. Microsoft SQL Backup Jobs Flat File Backup or On-line Backup via Plug-in It is possible to use SQL s own maintenance task to backup a database to a file and back this up using a normal file backup task. This has the advantage of the file being local on the server available for immediate restore. However, the disadvantage is that addition disk space is consumed on the server for this copy and that it is still required to be backed up off-site. We would recommend the use of a MBS SQL Plug-in for the following reasons:- 1. It is an on-line backup, in that the SQL service does not need to be stopped. 2. The backup is transmitted immediately over the wire on off-site. 3. No local disk space is consumed by a database db. Type of SQL Recovery Model It is important when running MS SQL to choose whether you are running a Simple Recovery Model or a Full Recovery Model. The Simple Recovery Model will provide you with simple and efficient backups and restores. This does not backup the transaction logs with the database. Instead it deletes them when transactions that they contain are committed to the database. This is similar to a circular logging option. You must handle the truncation and reclamation of transaction log space yourself. If your SQL server is running in simple mode than a full daily backup is only required. The Full Recovery Model uses the Agent to manage the backups and logs. You need to run regular (full) and incremental backups (with transaction log truncation). Incremental backups do not necessarily reduce the size of the transaction logs. To manage the

11 transaction log space, the logs must be truncated, and space used by the logs must be reclaimed. When the logs are truncated, the space left by previous obsolete transactions is reused. SQL logs are truncated after an incremental backup. If you want to use the Agent to manage the backups and logs, you need to use the Full Recovery model, and run regular full and incremental backups, with transaction log truncation. When using the Full Recovery Model, these other factors must be considered: 1) A weekly incremental backup Job must be scheduled. 2) The level of activity on the Database, as this affects the rate at which MS SQL transaction logs will grow. 3) Amount of space required for the local transaction logs and how their growth is managed. 4) Amount of space required on the Vault. 5) The complexity of the restore procedure (a single-pass restore is still supported). Default SQL Databases SQL has the following three default databases that are required for operation:- Master Model MSDB These maintain configuration information about SQL and should include in a separate back up job. You are not required to back up Northwind or pubs these are Microsoft demo databases and should be excluded from any back task. Customer Databases These should be backed up to suit the customer s requirements i.e. daily, weekly, and monthly, etc. You can either create a separate task for each DB or include them all in the same task. NOTE: Please remember that whenever a new database is created in SQL that it is not automatically included and that you have to add it to a task or create a new one. Microsoft Exchange DR Backup Job There are a number of ways to backup MS Exchange. It can be backed up locally using NTBackup to create a flat file e.g. c:\exchange.bkf, this then can be backed up by MBS or you can use the Exchange Agent/Plug-in backup option. With either option, it is worth excluding the area where MS Exchange is stored from any other backups i.e. c:\exchange. MS Exchange Agent/Plug-in

12 The advantages of doing an MS Exchange Agent/Plug-in backup are a. Only one backup is done. b. The backup is usually performed out of hours and therefore doesn t impact on internet bandwidth when staff are present. c. There will a need to perform only one restore to recover the Exchange databases. Are there any performance or sizing limitations with the Exchange DR plug-in? While there is no limit to the size or number of Exchange databases which can be captured by the plug-in, to improve backup and restore performance of larger Exchange servers, MBS now supports parallel backups of Exchange storage groups with V5.30 of the MBS Exchange DR plug-in. This allows separate storage groups to be backed up or restored simultaneously, should line bandwidth allow. With larger Exchange databases (>100GB), database administrators should consider organising the Exchange server into two or more storage groups and multiple databases. This configuration not only helps to speed up backups, but may also improve overall performance of the Exchange server. The option to truncate the transaction logs is only effective when backing up the Storage Groups on an exchange server, if you are backing up the individual databases, this option has no effect. Full or incremental backup? The backup type Full, using a Delta (changed data) technique, backs up and optimizes all the changes in a MS Exchange (.edb,.log, etc) that have occurred since the last backup. This data is added to the original safeset to complete the entire backup safeset. Using Full with the delta technique saves a great deal of time, as only changes are transmitted to the Vault. Incremental backups are transaction logs only. To produce a complete picture of the up-todate MS Exchange database the incremental transaction logs are added to the safeset. Incremental backups take the least amount of time to perform. But during a restoration, the logs files will be played back to achieve the most up-to-date restore since the last backup. On MS Exchange 5.5 circular logging must be disabled for incremental backups to work. Depending on bandwidth, it is recommended that full backups are performed periodically. Ideally, if bandwidth permits, perform a Full every time. When backing up MS Exchange it is recommended not to use Open Transaction Manager or Open File Manager. The backup does not benefit from OTM or OFM, in this case. Also, using OTM or OFM slows down the backup. If using Open File Manager then exclude the MS Exchange folder. Mail Box Backups An important note regarding the Mailbox backup is that it takes 4 to 8 times longer per gigabyte to perform than a DR backup. This is primarily because Microsoft optimized the

13 backup protocol for backing up the entire DB, not for performing backups at the mailbox or folder level. Also, for mailbox and folder level backups, a pre-scan is required which can slow the process. The pre-scan looks through the mailboxes for messages that have been sent to more than one recipient, so that only one copy of that mail message will be backed up. On smaller Exchange servers with less than 100 mailboxes, all mailboxes may be backed up with a single MAPI task. However for larger Exchange servers, it is recommended that MAPI backups are broken down between important users (Such as upper management), users who require frequent restoring of messages, and regular users. To ensure that backup and recovery times for mailbox backups remain reasonable, it is recommended that backups are limited to no more than 100 mailboxes or around 50GB of data. In the event that more than one mailbox backup task is created, these can be scheduled to either run after each other, or run at the same time. It should be noted that mailbox backups are very system intensive, so running more than one Mailbox backup simultaneously should only be attempted on Exchange servers with multiple processors and no less than 1GB of physical memory. In addition, since Mailbox backups can impact system performance, it is suggested that Mailbox backup tasks are done when there few or no users accessing the Exchange server. Due to this increase in the length of the backup and because the DR and MAPI cannot run together, careful scheduling of these tasks must be performed. Microsoft SharePoint Server Plug-In The SharePoint Server Plug-In performs backups and restores of MS SharePoint Portal 2003 and MS Office SharePoint Server 2007 on Windows 2003 Servers only. The SharePoint Plug-In enables brick level backups and restores of SharePoint items such as webs, lists, libraries, folders and documents. This high level of granularity enables backups and restores of the entire site, down to different individual document versions. You can also restore a document as a document or a document version to the file system. When deleting a site, use delete from the site collections list in SharePoint Central Administration. Sites deleted using any other method will not be restorable to the original location (SharePoint server). Restore to file system (original location) is still possible. In operations involving image files, make sure that you include the corresponding files (same name) in _t and _w subfolders. If only the image is restored, these files generated by SharePoint are no longer available and Thumbnail links will be unavailable on the site and in Central Administration. When restoring a site after it has been deleted, any links in the navigation bar are not restored. They have to be manually recreated. MBS Agent Directory Backup I order to avoiding a reseed of your data in after a disaster backing the MBS agent installation folder should greatly reduce the chance of having to reseed your data. The key to the MBS Agent s Delta process is the Delta Mapping File (DTA file) located in the task

14 folder of the MBS Agent s installation directory. If this file becomes damaged, or is deleted, the task will need to reseed all its data as it doesn t have this DTA file. One method of safeguarding this file is to create a separate task on the Agent to backup the.dta files in your MBS Agent directory. You can also back up the Delta Mapping Index file (DTX file), but this file isn t as important as the Agent can recreate it as long as the DTA file is intact. To create the backup job Create a new Job (e.g. MBS_DB) Under the Source tab select the MBS Agent directory and click Include Check the Only files matching this filter checkbox and enter *.dta,*.dtx Complete the task as normal. Run a backup on this new Task just to create the task folder within the MBS Agent directory. Now, we do not want to backup the *.dta and *.dtx files from THIS Job as this could confuse the backup process. Edit the Job and Select the Selection Tab. Select the directory for this Job under the MBS installation directory and select Exclude. Check the Only files matching this filter checkbox and enter *.dta and *.dtx Save the Changes You can schedule this Task at any time your other backups do NOT run. Since the file is not used by any other process you can back it up during the day. It must be noted that the.dta files can be fairly large; depending on the size of your data set. You will need to decide whether the cost of a reseed greater than the larger vault footprint this new task will create. With a copy of the Delta Mapping file there is a good chance MBS Technical Support can resolve issues without the need for a reseed.

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