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Back Up to Multiple Destinations
Overview
Backing up to multiple destinations means your machines are backed up to two or more locations.
A common configuration is to have onsite backup for fast, convenient restores and offsite backup for disaster recovery. Backing up your data in more than one location provides the highest level of availability and protection.
Use these instructions to specify the destinations (including master, slaves, or clients) to which you want users to back up.
Before You Begin
You should be familiar with installing PRO Server and PRO Client. In addition, if you decide to use another PRO Server as a backup destination, you'll need to understand setting up PRO Server in Multi-server configurations.
How It Works
You can make any computer a backup destination by installing either PRO Client or PRO Server.
| When to use PRO Server | When to use PRO Client |
|---|---|
| You want centralized reporting of backup stats | You want a simple, easy to get up and running backup destination |
| You want enterprise-grade storage management | You don't need enterprise-grade storage management |
| You are backing up 10 or more computers | You are backing up 10 or fewer computers |
| The destination site has a static IP address | The destination site does not have a static IP address (e.g. a remote office using a cable Internet connection) |
Centrally Managing Backup Destinations
WARNING: The Default User Settings page allows you to make significant system changes that can affect users' ability to restore their backup, including removing all of the backup archives. Be sure to review the summary of other options for a complete understanding of the options.
- Install PRO Client on the computer that will receive the backups and log it into your PRO Server. At this time you should:
- record this computer's GUID (you'll need it to target computers that are not part of the organization) The GUID appears on the PRO Server Home page.
- configure the storage location to accept incoming backups under Settings > Client Settings > Inbound Backup Preferences.
- With the organization's information page displayed, click Default User Settings on the navigation menu.
- Clear the Inherit Default Destinations option to display the controls for defining destinations.
- Enter the GUID of your destination computer (saved from above) so that you can map any computer in your server as a destination.
- If the destination computer belongs to this org, you can choose it from the list of computers in this organization.
- (optional) Click Apply all changes to existing users if you want to apply this change to all existing computers in this org or any of its child orgs that inherit backup destination settings.
Applying the change to all existing users could include settings for starting a backup, adding a destination, removing a destination or stopping a backup; and this would be done for ALL of the affected computers. - After you click Save all computers entering this org will be granted permission to back up to both destinations in the list.
If you re-enable Inherit Backup Destinations, and apply that change to all users, a list of the destinations that will be removed appears in the Web Administration Console.
Considerations
If you choose the option to apply these settings to existing users, clicking the Remove or Stop Backups options result in removing the backup archives for existing users. This table identifies the effect of applying these options to existing users on their backup archives.
| Option | Effect | Deletes Backup Archives |
|---|---|---|
| Auto Start | Indicates whether or not the clients granted this destination will automatically start backing up immediately | No |
| Apply to Existing | Indicates whether or not changes should apply to all computers in this org (and possibly child orgs) | - |
| Stop Backups | Stop backups running to this destination without canceling permission to use the destination (the client could restart) | Yes |
| Remove | Removes the destination from the list | Yes |
Granting Permission to a Single Account
In addition to making a default destination available to the entire organization, you can specify that a destination is available to a specific user.
- Navigate to: Organizations > OrgName > UserName > ComputerName.
In this case, the UserName is the user associated with the destination computer. The ComputerName is the destination computer. - From the navigation menu, choose Backup Sources.
- In the Add Users area, enter the email address of the user to want to be able to back up this destination.
- Click Save.