The default Memset backup policy

When the R1Soft backup service is ordered the client (or agent) is installed on your server and at the same time a control panel account is created on the backup server. When the control panel account is created a single backup policy is also created to backup your server. The default will be given the Memset name of your server + Daily Backup e.g. "examplaaa Daily Backup". The policy has the following properties:

All partitions and files systems will be backed up.
Daily backup during the night (the exact time is different for every server but is shown in policy)
7 recover points. This means that historical data from the preceding seven days is retained.
MsSQL databases
Exchange server

Modifying the default policy or creating a new policy

The dialogue box for creating a new policy or modifying an existing one are exactly the same so the following guide can be used for either option.

The default backup policy is normally sufficient for most requirements and can be left unmodified. However, should it be necessary to modify it then the following guide will show you how to do this.

The Policies page in Server Backup Manager allows you to view, add, and edit policies. You can access all of the functions you need to manage your policies by clicking Settings and then *Policies *in the Main menu.

Edit policies:

Find the policy you want to edit in the list of Policies, click the corresponding Actions icon, and select Edit Policy.

This will open a new dialog box where all the configurable parameters for the policy can be edited. The following image shows the first page; Policy Settings and all the other sections of the policy are the tabs along the top of the screen shot.

Each section is explained below.

Policy Settings

This page contains all the most general setting of the policy. The sections and points are as follows:

Identification

Enabled - This option is where the policy is turned off and on. Disabling the policy will only suspend its operation and does not delete it.
Name - The displayed name of the policy.
Description - The displayed description of the policy.

Scheduling

Backup Schedule - This is where the timetable for when the backups are taken is configured. The schedule options here are:
- On demand (this means that backups will only be taken when they are run manually by logging into the control panel and clicking on the Run Now button)
- Minutely
- Hourly
- Daily
- Monthly
- Weekly
- Yearly

Data Retention

In the Local Retention section you can set how many recovery points to keep based on recovery point age. Recovery points that match this setting are also called retention points.

Recovery Point Retention
The number of recovery points represents the number of backups that are retained in the current pool. Once the number of recovery points taken equals number of recovery points to retain then the oldest will get merged to make way for the newest on each subsequent backup.

Furthermore, should you wish to stop a particular recovery point being deleted it is possible to lock recovery points such that they will never get deleted. Please see the section on Managing Recovery Points for detailed information on configuring recovery points, archived recovery points and locking recovery points.

File Excludes and Advanced Excludes

It is sometimes desirable to exclude certain files or directories from a backup in order to reduce wasted space on the backup server. These exclusions are set in next two sections, File Excludes and Advanced Excludes sections. Please note that the database files can not be excluded if you wish to restore them. You would need to not exclude the files from the backup.

The first section, File Excludes, presents a browsable representation of the filesystem on the server to be backed up. Each directory and file has a check box to the left of it. When checked the file or directory (and all the contents of the a checked directory including it's sub-directories) will be excluded from the backup.

The second section, Advanced Excludes, allows a pattern matched exclusion rule to be set. This means that either a file name or a part of a file name and/or extension can be used with a * indicating that that part will match anything.

The following image shows two exclude rules:

The first will exclude all files that end in the extension .mp3 on the entire C: drive because the path is set to be C:\ and the Recursive i.e. drill down into all sub-directories, box is checked.

The second rule will exclude any files that end in .flac from the C:\Music directory and will not drill down into any sub-directories.

Backing up Exchange instances

Backing up all the exchanges instances on the server is achieved by simply checking the Backup All Exchange Instances box. When this is checked the R1Soft client on the server will automatically scan the server for exchange instances and present a list of the available instances for backup.

Backing up databases

R1Soft has two sections for backing up databases on your server. One for native MsSQL databases and the other for MySQL databases.

SQL Server, will backup Microsoft SQL databases present on the server. The default configuration for the Memset policy is to backup all MsSQL databases on the server. If you wish to only backup selected databases uncheck the Backup All Databases box, click the Discover Instances button and add the databases that you want backed up.

For more information, see http://wiki.r1soft.com/display/ServerBackupManager/Configure+MS+SQL+server+replication

MySQL, will backup MySQL (and also MariaDB) databases. This section requires some additional configuration in order to log into the MySQL server and take a consistent backup. After clicking on the MySQL tab you need to hit the Add new MySQL instance button:

The sections of the dialogue are explained below:

Name
This is where a friendly name for the database instance is applied. It need only be something that you can remember.

Host
By default the R1Soft server will use the server that the policy has been created for. If your server has has more than one IP and MySQL is listening on a different port you will need to enter that here.

The port field is pre-filled with port number 3306 as this is the standard MySQL port. If your MySQL instance is listening on a non-standard port you will need to enter it here.

Authentication
Here you need to enter the username and password for a user that has sufficient privileges to access all the databases. This is usually the default root user.

Data Directory
The R1Soft server will discover the data directory for the MySQL instance. This is the directory that contains the databases. Should this be non-standard or if R1Soft is incorrect it can be manually set here.

Base Directory
This is the directory that contains the MySQL installation. Again R1Soft will find this out automatically. It can also be set manually if your databases are in a non-standard location.

Options
These are some additional options backup options that can be enabled.

Summary
This page prints all the information that has just been entered along with a button to test the connection to the database.

If all the details of the database were entered correctly then you will see the above success message when the Test Connection button is clicked.

Control Panels

This section is where hosting control panels such as cPanel, or Pleask are enabled and configured. Memset's R1Soft instances do not currently support this feature.

Advanced Policy Setting

This final tab contains a few additional configuration options. They can be safely left as the defaults. For more information regarding these options please see - http://wiki.r1soft.com/display/ServerBackupManager/Access+policies.