Backing up file system data

Define regular backup jobs and specify options to run and create backup copies to protect your file system data.

Before you begin

During the initial backup, IBM Spectrum® Protect Plus creates a new vSnap volume and NFS share. During incremental backups, the previously created volume is reused. The IBM Spectrum Protect Plus file system agent mounts the share on the server where the backup is to be completed.

Review the following procedures and considerations before you create a backup job definition:
  • Add the file system servers that you want to back up. For the procedure, see Adding a file system server.
  • Configure a Service Level Agreement (SLA) Policy as described in this task.
  • Before an IBM Spectrum Protect Plus user can implement backup and restore operations, roles and resource groups must be assigned to the user. Grant users access to resources and backup and restore operations through the Accounts pane. For more information, see Managing user access.

A backup operation fails if the path is longer than 255 characters. If your paths are longer than 255 characters, you must enable longer paths by using the Enable Win32 long paths option in the Windows policy editor.

Note: Neither file system shares, or Microsoft cluster volumes can be protected with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus.

About this task

The following steps describe how to back up resources that are assigned to an SLA policy. To run an on-demand backup job for one or more resources regardless of whether those resources are already associated with an SLA policy, click Create job, select Ad hoc backup, and follow the instructions in Running an ad hoc backup job.

Procedure

  1. In the navigation panel, expand Manage Protection > File Systems.
  2. Select a file system server to back up in the Windows Backup pane.
    • You can select an entire file system server by clicking the server name check-box. You can also select all file servers that are listed by clicking the check-box as shown. Any data added to the servers selected is automatically assigned to the SLA policy that you choose. Select file system server
    • Or, you can select a specific drive or mount point from a specific file system server by clicking the server name, and choosing a drive or mount point from the list. File system drives
  3. Optional: Click Select Options Select Options to specify files to be excluded from the backup job you are setting up. Alternatively, you can click Modify Excluded Files to leave the exclude rules as they are already defined. Click Save to commit your changes.
    If you want to exclude all the files from a drive, you can specify the drive or a folder in a drive like this Z:\test. If you would like to exclude all files of a certain type from your backup job, you can specify that exclusion by using a string like this example *.png.

    Exclude files or drives

    Tips for configuring options:
    Review the following tips to help you configure options for the backup job:
    • To set the options for child resources to the same values as the parent, click Set all options to inherit.
    • If multiple resources were selected for the backup job, the options are indeterminate. If you change the value for an option, that value is used for all selected resources after you click Save.
    • Options that are shown in yellow indicate that the option value has changed from the previously saved value.
    • To close the Options pane without saving changes, click Select Options.
  4. Select the file systems server, drive, or mount point for backing up, and click Select an SLA policy Select SLA policy to choose an SLA policy for that item.
    You can choose from the following options: Gold, Silver, or Bronze. Each policy type has different frequencies and retention rates as shown in the following picture:

    SLA policy types

    If you want to define a new SLA policy, select Manage Protection > Policy Overview. In the SLA Policies pane, click Add SLA Policy, and define your policy preferences. To edit an existing policy with custom retention and frequency rates, click the edit icon Edit icon and define your preferences. Click Save to commit your changes.
  5. Click Save to save the SLA policy.
    If you want to run the backup job immediately, click Actions > Start. The status in the log changes to show that the backup is Running.

What to do next

To view the status of your existing file system SLA policies, select Manage Protection > Policy Overview to view a summary of your protection as shown in the following picture:

Policy status