Hints & tips
Don’t know where to start with 247Backup?
Here are some hints and tips to help you on your way to creating complete, scheduled backups of all your data.
Using 247Backup for the first time
- Use the 247Backup Getting Started Wizard to help you start running your backups – this will explain everything you need to know about running the backups.
Picking the files to backup
- Have an idea of the files you need to backup, and how large they are before you purchase any storage space – you don’t want to find that you have used too much space, or that you have lots of unused space at the end of each month.
- You should backup any files that you use on a regular basis as often as possible – FastBIT technology will shrink them down, only saving the changes, however small or large.
- It doesn’t matter if you backup too few or too many files at first – you can always add or delete files as time goes on. You may have to change your subscription level, but this couldn’t be easier to manage from the My Account pages of 247Backup.
- If you want to backup data held on mapped drives, or servers, then you will need an extra client licence - when you are calculating the cost of your backup service, simply specify the total number of PCs including the server and you will be able to backup the files from your own PC. Remember - even if several people access the same files from their PCs, you only need to put them on one backup schedule, so you only need one extra licence.
Backing up Email
To backup the emails you have saved in Microsoft Outlook, you will need to follow a few steps.
- Create a directory in which to keep your Outlook Backups, c:\backups\outlook is a good file path.
- Visit the Outlook 2003 Add-in: Personal Folders Backup page of the Microsoft website, and download and install the program as per the instructions.
- Create a backup set within 247Backup, calling it Outlook Backup.
- Select the c:\backups\outlook directory to be included in your Outlook Backup set and create a schedule of when you want the backup to run.
Scheduling backups
- Backups can be scheduled at any time – whenever you feel is relevant.
- When scheduling backups, you can limit the amount of CPU usage, so that 247Backup runs in the background without limiting or slowing down the applications you have open at the time.
- You can schedule as many or few backups as you want, so you could do one every day, apart from Tuesday when you do three, if you want.
Exchange and SQL Backup alternative to OFM
For most installations of Microsoft SQL and Exchange servers, we recommend using Open File Manager in conjunction with 247Backup to ensure your data is backed up effectively without stopping these business critical services.
However, if you can stop these services before running 247Backup, the backup software can perform the necessary backup of these mission critical services without the added expense of the Open File Manager Plug-in.
247Backup provides a method which, when executed, will minimize the downtime of these services during backup. What we have done is provide "Pre" and "Post" commands built within the product. This allows the you to shut down Exchange/SQL before a scheduled backup takes place and then launches the application after the backup is complete. This allows you backup critical information while minimizing the "backup window" and still take advantage of FastBIT.
- For Exchange Backup (Exchange 2000/2003 only) -
Pre Backup command: net stop MSExchangeIS
Post Backup command: net start MSExchangeIS - For SQL Backup -
Pre Backup command: net stop MSSQLSERVER
Post Backup command: net start MSSQLSERVER
If you are unable to stop these services due to business requirements or other reasons and you do not want to use Open File Manager to secure your data, you do have another choice.
- For Exchange Backup (Exchange 2000/2003 only) -
Use the Windows Backup Utility to backup the Exchange Store and System State to seperate files.
Schedule the Windows Backup Utility to overwrite these files on every backup.
Select and schedule the backup files with 247Backup. - For SQL Backup -
Use the SQL Enterpise Manager to schedule backups of your databases to files.
Make sure to have the schedule overwrite the previous days backup.
Select and schedule the backup files with 247Backup.
