Launch Backup Monkery and click on the app icon on the main toolbar and then click Add New Account.

A setup window will appear prompting you to enter the display name and path. Further, you can specify a different prefix by clicking Advanced settings.

Optionally, you can schedule regular consistency checks.

Click OK, and you’re all set. Now you can proceed to use that local storage as your backup destination of choice when configuring backup plans.

1. Run Backup Monkey and click on Files button to start Backup Plan Wizard.

2. In the Advanced Options step of the Wizard, enable the Backup NTFS permissions option and hit Next to proceed.

3. Select the folders and files you want to back up with the set of their custom NTFS permissions.

4. Once the backup is done, you’ll see the backed up objects in the Backup Storage.

Note: In the Backup Storage section, you can find only the actual backed up files and folders. It does not display NTFS permissions of those objects. You can find these NTFS permissions displayed in the History tab.

How to Restore NTFS permissions with Backup Monkey

1. Run Backup Monkey and click Restore to start Restore Plan Wizard.

2. In the Advanced Options step, just enable the Backup NTFS permissions option and hit Next to complete the restore plan.

Note: The NTFS permissions are kept within the file version. If you modify NTFS permissions for the file but do not modify the file itself then the next backup iteration will back up only the updated permissions for that file. So, during the restore process, that file will be restored with the latest set of its NTFS permissions.

Step 1. Run the Backup Monkey client.

Step 2. Click on the Image Based button.

Step 3. Select a cloud storage to store your image-based backups.

Step 4. Specify a name for your backup plan.

Step 5. Select Image Based Backup option.

Step 6. Select the partitions you want to back up and hit Next.

Step 7. Select files/folders you want to exclude.

Step 8. Specify encryption and compression options for your backup plan.

Step 9. Specify Purge options.

Step 10. Set up the backup schedule.

Step 11. Specify pre/post actions.

Step 12. Specify notification options.

Step 13. See the Summary screen and finish the Backup Wizard.

Run Backup Monkey and click on “MS SQL Server” button in the top bar.

In the backup wizard you will need to select SQL Server instance and the authentication method. You can choose either SQL Server or Windows authentication. After selection of preferable authentication method you’ll be asked to enter your username and a password.

On the next step user can choose which databases to backup. Option list allows you to choose whether you need to backup all your databases, only user databases or to select particular database manually.

Next step is the compression and encryption options setup. If you use MS SQL Server 2008 or higher, compression will be performed by SQL Server. If not, compression will be performed by the backup software.

Then you’ll have to specify schedule options. You can run a backup plan manually or can setup the application to backup your files automatically. Programs can be set on automatic backup at a certain time on a schedule or at user-specified intervals. You can choose whether to use predefined templates or configure an advanced schedule.

On the next step you’ll need to specify the start date and select the schedule template.

If you’ve chosen an advanced schedule mode, you’ll be asked to set options for full backup, differential backup and transaction log backup. Here you can set date, time and frequency for each backup type. Also on this step you’ll have to define the start date to run your first backup.

On the summary page you can overview the backup plan options and run the backup plan.

Open Backup Monkey and then click on “MS Exchange” button in the top menu backup section.

Step 1. Choose a storage location for MS Exchange databases backup.

Step 2. Name your backup plan.

Step 3. Now you need to select what MS Exchange database(s) you want to back up.

Step 4. Set up Compression and Encryption options. Check necessary boxes, select encryption algorithm and specify a password for encryption.

Step 5. Specify purge options.

Step 6. Set up backup schedule.

Step 7. Specify full backup options.

Step 8. Set up pre/post-backup actions.

Step 9. Specify email notification options.

On the summary page you can overview the backup plan options and run backup plan.

Step 1. Run Backup Monkey.

Step 2. Click on “Image Based“.

Step 3. Select a storage option for your Bare Metal backups.

Step 4. Specify a name for your backup plan.

Step 5. Select a Backup Type from Bare metal recovery or System State.

Step 6. Select an intermediate storage location to place backup data before transfer to cloud or file system storage.

Step 7. Specify encryption and compression options for your backup plan.

Step 8. Set up a schedule.

Step 9. Specify pre/post actions.

Step 10. Specify notification options.

Step 11. See the Summary screen and finish the Backup Wizard.

Depending on what type of backup you’ve chosen on Step 5, you will be able to run a Bare Metal or System State backup plan. To run a backup plan immediately check the “Run backup now” box.

Step 1. Click on the “Backup VMware” on the toolbar to start the VMware Backup Wizard.

Step 2. Select a storage where you want to back up your VMware machines.

Step 3. Name your backup plan.

Step 4. Select the server you want to back up and specify login and password for access. It can be vCenter or ESXi Host and you can use IP address or machine/host name. If the target which you choose is vCenter then a list of hosts from the server will be requested, and the host can be selected from the list.

Step 5. Choose the virtual machines to back up. Provided are three options:

• Back up all Virtual Machines – initiates backup of all virtual machines on selected host.
• Back up all only running Virtual Machines – initiates backup only of running machines on selected host. The stopped and not started virtual machines will be skipped.
• Back up selected Virtual Machines – allows to select virtual machine(s) from the list to back up.

Step 6. Specify Compression and Encryption options.

Step 7. Set up Purge options.

Step 8. Specify the Schedule. Here you can select one of the predefined schedule templates or set up a custom schedule.

Step 9. Specify the Full Backup Schedule options. Because block level backup is used it is strongly recommended to run a full backup periodically. Otherwise you will not be able to purge out of date versions (differential backups) because of their dependency on an initial full backup.

Step 10. Specify Pre/Post commands you want to be executed before and/or after the backup completes.

Step 11. Set up notifications.

Step 12. Review a Summary and finish the Backup Wizard.

Step 1. Click on “Hyper-V” on the toolbar to start the Hyper-V Backup Wizard.

Step 2. Select a storage location where you want to back up your virtual machines.

Step 3. Name your backup plan.

Step 4. Choose the virtual machines to back up. Provided are three options:

• Back up all Virtual Machines – initiates backup of all virtual machines.
• Back up all only running Virtual Machines – initiates backup only running machines at the moment of the backup. The stopped and not started virtual machines will be skipped.
• Back up selected Virtual Machines – allows to select virtual machine(s) from the list to back up.

Step 6. Specify Compression and Encryption options.

Step 7. Set up Purge options.

Step 8. Specify the Schedule. Here you can select one of the predefined schedule templates or set up a custom schedule.

Step 9. Specify the Full Backup Schedule options. Because block level backup is used it is strongly recommended to run a full backup periodically. Otherwise you will not be able to purge out of date versions (differential backups) because of their dependency on an initial full backup.

Step 10. Specify Pre/Post commands you want to be executed before and/or after the backup completes.

Step 11. Set up notifications.

Step 12. Review a Summary and finish the Backup Wizard.

Step 1. Open the “Backup Storage” tab.

Step 2. Here you’ll see the list of files and computers applied to your account. It may be several computers using the same user account.

Step 3. When all the required files are located, just right-click on any of them and click Restore .

Step 4. At the “Plan name” step specify whether you want to save this configuration as a separate restore plan or to use it once. Give your plan a name if you want to save it and click “Next” button.

Step 5. At the “Restore Type” step choose version of the files you want to restore. Available options are:

Latest Version. Choosing this option will automatically restore the latest version of selected files.

Point in time. You can specify a date and time of the files’ version to restore. If there is no version of such date and time, the restore will not run.

While selecting the requisite restore date of your files, you can now specify the modification and backup period. The modification period indicates that only files that were modified within that period will be restored. Similarly, specifying the backup period will ensure that only files that were backed up throughout that period will be restored.

Manually. Make manual selection of files’ versions you would like to restore.

Choose the preferred option and click “Next” button.

Step 6. At the “Destination” step specify local folder on your computer where the restored files will be saved. There are couple options available:

Restore to original location. If you choose this option your files will be restored to the location where they were originally kept.

Restore to specific location. This option allows you to specify a local folder on your computer in which the restored files will be saved. You can also set up this location as a default destination for future restores. Also there’s an option to overwrite existing files in the local storage.

When you’re finished with a restore destination configuration, click “Next” button to proceed.

Step 7. At the “Encryption Options” step enter a password to decrypt selected files, if they are encrypted.

Step 8. Review restore settings on the “Summary” screen and and click “Next”.

Step 9. Click Finish to start the restoration process.

If you’ve done everything correctly, the restoration will begin. You can watch the restoration progress as shown on the screenshot below.

Restore from the “Backup Plans” tab

You can restore from “Backup Plans” tab only if you got previously configured backup plan their.

Step 1. Click on the “Backup Plans” tab. Select the plan for which you want to run a restore process. Expand the selected plan to view its properties.

Step 2. Click on the “Restore Files” link to launch “Restore Wizard”.

Step 3. The Restore Wizard will appear. The following steps are identical to those from Step 5.

Step 1. Run the backup client.

Step 2. Click on the Restore button.

Step 3. Select a cloud storage to restore your system image file from.

Step 4. Choose whether you want to run this restore plan just once or to save the plan so you can use it further.

Step 5. Select Restore Image Based Backup option.

Step 6. Select the restore type: whether you want to restore the latest version of the files or restore them to a particular point in time.

Step 7. Choose, whether to restore your image based backup as a physical disk or as a virtual disk.

Step 8. Select the partitions you want to restore.

Step 9. Select the destination for restore: the particular physical disk you would like to restore your image based backup to.

Step 10. On the Decryption screen, enter the password you’ve specified in the Backup Wizard (Step 7).

Step 11. Specify notification options.

Step 12. See the Summary screen and finish the Restore Wizard. To run a restore plan immediately on the end of the backup plan setup, check Run backup now box.

Resize Disk Option

You can also resize selected partitions and restore to several virtual disks.

Restore as a virtual disk

On the Step 7 of the restore guide select Restore as a virtual disk.

Select Reorganize partitions using advanced dialog.

 

The window will open allowing you to configure virtual partitions.

 

Restore as a physical disk

Select Restore as a physical disk.

 

Click on the target size amount of the needed disk.

 

The window will open allowing you to specify custom partition size.

 

How to Restore Image Based Backup on Another Computer

In some cases, you may need to perform the restore of your system on another computer. To restore your image based backup on another computer just follow the instruction below prior to running the Restore Wizard:

Step 1. Download and install another copy of Managed Backup client on a new computer.

Step 2. Register exactly the same cloud storage account that used before.

Step 3. Select the same storage bucket as before.

Step 4. Click on the Advanced settings link to specify the backup prefix.

Step 5. From the “Backup prefix” drop-down menu, select the same prefix that you used in you previous computer so that Backup Monkey can find the data in the specified storage bucket.

Step 6. The next step is to synchronize the repository in order to retrieve the metadata of all the files associated with the backed up system.

Note: The repository sync will start automatically for all cloud storages. Once sync completed, you will be able to see your backups on the Backup Storage tab. If it is not there by some reason, run the repository sync manually:

To synchronize the repository, select Options from the drop-down menu located in the top-right corner of the screen.

Step 7. In the Options dialog, navigate on Repository tab and click Synchronize Repository button.

Step 8. In the Synchronize Repository dialog, select the desired storage account from the Account drop-down list and click Synchronize Now button.

After all the steps required for repository synchronization are done, just go ahead and run the Managed Backup Restore Wizard to recover your system from an image based backup.

1. Run Backup Monkey..

2. Click the “Restore” icon.

3. Use the Restore Wizard to select a cloud storage where to restore from.

4. On the “Plan Name” screen, select whether to run the restore just once or to save a created restore plan for the further runs. Click “Next”.

5. Select one of the options:

– “Restore MS SQL Server Database” (restores MS SQL Server database to selected SQL Server)

– “Restore MS SQL Server backup files” (just downloads database backup files)

Click “Next”.

6. Select one of the version options for the data to be restored:

– Latest version

– Point in time

Click “Next”.

7. For Restore MS SQL Server Database: select SQL Server Instance from the drop-down list and choose the type of Authentication.

For SQL Server Authentication:

Specify your Login and Password.

Click “Next”.

8. Select the databases to be restored. Click “Next”.

9. For “Restore MS SQL Server Database” only:

You may take one or two actions:

– You can change original database name to restore it under another name,

– You can overwrite existing database using “Overwrite the existing database” option.

Click “Next”.

10. For “Restore MS SQL Server Database” only:

Select Data file folder and Log file folder. Specify a File name template.

11. For “Restore MS SQL Server backup files” only:

Specify a destination folder and a backup file template. Click “Next”.

12. For the data encrypted on the client side:

Select the “Decrypt encrypted files with the following password” option. Enter your password and re-enter in to confirm. Click “Next”.

13. For the data backed up to Amazon Glacier:

Specify Smart Restore options.

14. Specify the notifications options. Click “Next”.

15. Review the summary. After you are sure that the selected options suits you, click “Next”.

16. Click “Finish” to complete MS SQL restore plan creation.

Once you have created the MS SQL restore plan, you can run it immediately or whenever you want.

It takes two steps to restore MS Exchange: download Exchange database and log files from the cloud storage and replace current Exchange files with the restored files. Let’s look at entire restoring process step by step.

Step 1. Launch Backup Monkey client and log in with email and password of the user account you want to restore files from.

Step 2. Click on the “Restore” icon.

Step 3.Select an account and database(-s) to restore.

Step 4.Select a location to restore Exchange files and perform a restore with desirable settings.

NOTE: You can’t restore to original location within the wizard, you will need to dismount your current database (if any) and replace Exchange files with restored files.

Step 5.Specify other options to restore (encryption, notification etc.) if necessary.

Step 6.Run the restore plan…

Step 7.Restore complete. The next step is going to be outside Backup Monkey. Launch the Exchange Management Console.

Step 8.Using Exchange Management Console dismount the database(-s) you would like to restore.

Step 9.Locate the log files (see Log Folder Path) and the .edb database file (see Database File Path).

Step 10.Move them to another location (or delete if you no longer need them).

Step 11.Open the folder with the files you have restored and copy these files to the original folders (“Database File Path” for .edb file and “Log Folder Path” for the logs).

Step 12.Mount the Exchange database.

Run Backup Monkey and under Backup Storage locate your database. Right-click on it and click Item Lever restore .

A pop-up window will appear and ask you if you wish to apply logs. Roughly speaking, it would add information from the logs to the database and subsequently remove unnecessary logs.

A newly appeared window is the Microsoft Exchange item-level restore assistant. On the left you can see a file structure of your mailboxes, emails, calendar events, contacts, etc. Select the files you want to restore.

Right-click on them and click Restore .

Now enter your Microsoft Exchange credentials and click OK .

Done! Your files should be successfully restored by now.

Bare Metal Restore procedure has two general steps:

1. Restore backup file from the storage via Backup Monkey.

2. Restore via Windows Server Recovery tools.

System State Restore procedure doesn’t require the second step.

How to run Bare Metal or System State Restore Plan on Client’s Computer

Step 1. Run the Backup Monkey Restore Wizard.

Step 2. Choose whether you want to run this restore plan just once or to save the plan for futher using.

Step 3. Select “Bare Metal Restore” or “Restore System State” depending on the type of backup you have.

Step 4. Specify backup you want to restore.

Step 5. Specify a destination where to restore your data. You can restore to a specific location only, no original location for these types of backup. Then you will be able to copy or specify this backup file to recover a system.

Note: if destination is an external drive, you need to specify a root path to be able to continue bare metal or system state recovery on a new computer. This is because a recover from external drive requires WindowsImageBackup folder to be on the root.

Step 6. On the Decryption screen enter a password you’ve specified in the Backup Wizard (Step 6).

Step 7. See the Summary screen and finish the Restore Wizard. To run a restore plan immediately on the end of the backup plan setup, check “Run backup now” box.

How to Restore a Computer from Bare Metal

To initiate a Bare Metal Recovery on a computer with no operating system you have to restore (or write) your backup data to an external drive. Plug such drive to your Bare Metal computer and switch the computer on.

Step 1. Choose your language, time and currency preferences.

Step 2. Click on the “Repair your computer” link.

Step 3. Check the “Restore your computer using a system image that you created earlier” radio button.

Step 4. Check “Use the latest available system image” radio button.

Step 5. Click “Finish” to start recovery routines.

Step 6. When recovery is finished restart the computer.

Once the computer is restarted, you will find a computer in the same conditions like there were on the source computer on the moment of Bare Metal backup plan run.

1. Launch Backup Monkey, navigate on Backup Storage > Disk Image.

2. Right-click on the system image file and select File Level Restore option.

3. You will see the list of volumes that are included in the system image backup.

4. Expand the volumes and find the individual files you would like to restore from the system backup. Right-click on the files and hit Restore to.

Note: You can restore the entire folder with all the files inside it. Just right-click on that folder and hit Restore to.

5. Choose the location you want to restore the files to and click OK.

6. You will see the following notification message.

7. To review the restore plan, go to Restore Plans tab where you can manage all the restore plans you have created. The green progress bar indicates the current progress of the data restoring.

1. Plug the USB device you want to use as bootable into your computer. Please, note that all information from this device will be permanently removed, so we strongly recommend you to backup all your data from the device in order to avoid losing any valuable data.

2. Launch Backup Monkey and navigate to the Make Bootable USB button on the toolbar.

3. In the dialog box, specify your USB device from the drop-down list and come up with a Master Password to protect your Recovery Disk. Then hit Create Disk button.

Note: You may also add your own drivers to the bootable USB flash. Just specify the path to the folder that contains the drivers in the Path to drivers field.

4. Once the process completes, you can go ahead and click Close button. You will have a new folder in your USB device called “Boot”.

That’s it! Now your bootable USB device is created! You can use it to recover your operating system in case of the system crash.

 

How to Create Bootable ISO File

1. Launch Backup Monkey and navigate to the Make Bootable USB button on the toolbar.

2. In the dialog box, specify a full path for ISO file you want to create. Then hit Create Disk button.

Note: You may also add your own drivers to the bootable ISO file. Just specify the path to the folder that contains the drivers in the Path to drivers field.

3. Once the process completes, you can go ahead and click Close button.

Now you can use this ISO file to recover your system on another physical or virtual machine by mouting as an external drive.

 

How to Recover from Bootable USB or ISO File

1. Plug the bootable USB device or mount ISO file as a drive into your computer and restart it.

2. You will see a welcome screen of the “Boot Menu” where you will be prompted to enter the Master Password that you specified when creating the bootable device (if you did not specify any password, just skip this step).

3. Click Bare Metal Recovery button.

4. This will start the Backup Monkey application.

5. When Backup Monkey is started, click Restore button on the toolbar to run the Restore Wizard.

Follow the Restore Wizard steps to initiate the recovery process. Just give it some time to complete and enjoy your operating system being up and running!

Note: You may want to take advantage of the management tools in order to perform some specific actions like getting logs or modifying the registry. To find the management tools, just click on System Tools button.

You’ll get to the “Tools” screen where you will see three available options: “Command Prompt”, “Registry Editor” and “Save Logs”.

Step 1. Run Backup Monkey.

Step 2. Click on the Restore button.

Step 3. Select a cloud storage to restore your system image file from.

Step 4. Choose whether you want to run this restore plan just once or to save the plan so you can use it further.

Step 5. Select Restore Image Based Backup option.

Step 6. Select Restore as virtual disk option and choose the desired virtual file format from the drop-down list.

Step 7. Select the partitions you want to restore.

Step 8. Specify a local folder to restore the selected partitions to and specify a name for the virtual disk file.

Step 9. On the Decryption screen, enter the password you’ve specified in the Backup Wizard (Step 7).

Step 10. Specify notification options.

Step 11. See the Summary screen and finish the Restore Wizard. To run a restore plan immediately on the end of the backup plan setup, check “Run backup now” box.

The next step to do is to create a virtual machine using Hyper-V Manager or VMware Workstation tools. When creating the new virtual machine, just add a hard drive you have made with Backup Monkey to this machine.

If you are going to restore your image based backup to Hyper-V virtual machine, then during the creation of this machine in the Virtual Machine Wizard you should specify Generation-2 option. However, please be advised that it is required only if you made your image based backup in the machine that is running on SCSI controller and use EFI for the system boot. On the machines, that boot through BIOS and run on IDE or SATA controllers, it is better to specify Generation 1 option with IDE controller.

If you are restoring your image based backup on VirtualBox and VMware then it’s better the same controller as you had in the source machine.

Step 1. Open the Restore Wizard and select storage you want to restore the virtual machines from.

Step 2. Name your restore plan if you want to use it periodically to restore the virtual machines.

Step 3. On the “Type of Data” screen select “Restore VMWare Virtual Machine“.

Step 4. Choose the “Restore Type” to restore from specified time.

Step 5. Select “VMware Host Server” you want to restore to, specify login and password for access. It can be vCenter or ESXi Host and you can use IP address or machine/host name. If the target which you chose is vCenter then a list of hosts from the server will be requested, and the host can be selected from the list.

Step 6. Choose the “Restore Source” to restore selected virtual machines from the list.

Step 7. On the “Restore Virtual Machine as” screen specify names for each virtual machines. You also have the option to replace existing virtual machines with the restored machines by selecting the “Overwrite existing” check box.

Step 8. Specify “Restore Options” for virtual machine(s): datastore and behavior for powered on virtual mashines.

Step 9. The “Encryption Options” screen allows you to enter a password if one is needed to decrypt the selected files.

Step 10. Specify the Schedule. Here you can set up a custom schedule for restore plan.

Step 11. Set up notifications.

Step 12. Review a Summary and finish the Restore Wizard.

Performing item-level restore

With Backup Monkey you can perform file-level restore for VMWare virtual machines simply by right-clicking on any of those machines in the Backup Storage tab and then clicking File Level Restore.

Shortly after the file manager will appear, whereupon you can select the required files and restore them to the specified location.

Step 1. Open the Restore Wizard and select storage you want to restore the virtual machines from.

Step 2. Name your restore plan if you want to use it periodically to restore the virtual machines.

Step 3. Choose the “Restore Hyper-V Virtual Machine” on the Type of Data step.

Step 4. Choose the “Restore Type” to restore from specified time.

Step 5. Choose the “Restore Source” to restore selected virtual machines from the list.

Step 6. Choose the “Destination” where to restore backup files.

Note: original location is not available for Hyper-V restore.

Step 7. The “Encryption Options” screen allows you to enter a password if one is needed to decrypt the selected files.

Step 8. Specify the Schedule. Here you can set up a custom schedule for restore plan.

Step 9. Set up notifications.

Step 10. Review a Summary and finish the Restore Wizard.

Add virtual machine to Hyper-V host

Step 1. Open Hyper-V Manager

Step 2. Right-click on your Hyper-V host being listed in the left panel and select New | Virtual Machine

Step 3. In New Virtual Machine Wizard specify virtual hard disk that you restored using Use an existing virtual hard disk on Connect Virtual Hard Disk step.

Performing item-level restore

Backup Monkey can perform file-level restore for Hyper-V virtual machines simply by right-clicking on any of those machines in the Backup Storage tab and then clicking File Level Restore.

Shortly after the file manager will appear, whereupon you can select the required files and restore them to the specified location.

Incremental backup is a feature that analyses your files, finds new and modified files and uploads only those files to your storage. To perform the incremental backup you need, of course, to perform an initial full backup. (Needless to say, this is one of the most efficient ways to perform your backup.

 

What Is Incremental Backup

As we have already mentioned, incremental backup only uploads new or modified files. Let’s see how it works.

Imagine that you have five files for backup and you are going to run weekly backup.

The first-week backup (initial full backup) will include all of them.

The second week, file1, file3 and file4 have been modified.

The second-week backup will only copy your modified files: file1m, file3m, file4m.

The following week, file2 and file5 have been modified. They become file2m and file5m.

The third-week backup will only copy your modified files file2m and file5m.

In the end, you have a dataset with several files completely changed. Each week, only the modified files were uploaded.

That is how incremental backup essentially works. And if a file is not changed but added to the backup set after week 3, it will appear in week 4 as file6.

 

The Advantages of Incremental Backup

 

There are specific advantages to performing incremental backups compared to full backups. They are:

Faster backups. Incremental backup will upload only changed and new files in the cloud or local storage. This is considerably faster than uploading an entire dataset each time.

Less storage capacity needed. Storage space means money. The less storage space you need, the less you will pay to your cloud storage provider. If you perform local backup, you will spend less on your hard drives.

Less bandwidth is consumed. When you perform a backup, the last thing you want is for it to cause your Internet connection to hang.

 

The Disadvantages of Incremental Backup

 

• Perform full backups from time to time. When you perform a full backup, you break the sequence of the previous incremental backups. In other words, you will backup only the files that currently exist on your device; the incremental backup only adds new files and changes since that last full backup.

 

• Set a retention policy for your files. A retention policy allows you to choose how long you keep your old files and how many versions of each file you keep. With incremental backup, it’s recommended to set a policy that allows you to delete old files after a given time, or files that have been deleted from your device. A retention policy is a flexible tool. See the tab for this in the help section.

 

Incremental Backup Software

 

Backup Monkey fully supports the concept of incremental backup, both locally and to the cloud, and enhances it with additional features. Our software performs incremental backup by default to ensure that there are no unnecessary copies of files and your storage space is used wisely.

However, depending on your needs, an incremental backup may not be enough — and you may want to look at an option called block-level incremental backup.

Block-Level Incremental Backup

 

Block-level backup performs in-depth file analysis and backs up only the modified portions of files, which makes it  an efficient tool when used properly.

This functionality is featured in Backup Monkey and can be easily toggled from the UI of the software by going to the Backup Plan Wizard, then Advanced Settings.

Point-in-Time Recovery from Incremental Backup

 

If you use incremental backup and have configured your backup plan well, then you will be able to recover your data, when needed, to the chosen point in time.

As an example, let’s say that your computer has been hit with ransomware. Luckily, your backup software has uploaded all your files to the cloud, and you can simply recover your files to the state of the previous week or point in time when your files were not affected by ransomware.

 

Any backup application has the following essential feature — a possibility to delete unnecessary copies automatically and thus save cloud storage space. This feature is called Retention Policy in Backup Monkey. This article provides detailed information about the logic of this policy operation and its useful peculiarities.

Versions History

To clean the storage space and delete all outdated backup copies it is very convenient to work with them in the version history format. It means that all user files are accompanied by a list of their previous versions in the backup system. In this case it is easy to link the entire scheme to corporate policies and make the cleaning process automatic.

All options of Retention Policy are available in the backup plan settings you choose. To get a clear understanding of it, choose any backup plan, click Edit Backup Plan and set Advanced Backup Mode. All settings of Retention Policy are available at the same-name step.

 

Delete Versions Older Than

This parameter deletes all file versions that were created before a certain date (day, week, month and year can be chosen) as measured against the initial backup or last modification date of your files.

In addition, you can check the box Always keep the last version that acts as a kind of a safety lock and prevents last version loss even if it is out of date according to the policy settings.

Keep Number of Versions

You can refrain from specifying the date and just store, let’s say, three last versions of the file. It is convenient for data that are rarely updated. For example, information on the website is rarely updated but it would be a good idea to have any history in case of its loss or a suddenly detected bug. Just choose Keep number of versions and set the required number of copies.

There’s also a useful check box called Delay purge for. It can be another one safety lock for your backup strategy. It just delays the cleaning process scheduled by the system for a certain period of time being a kind of an analog of pop-up button “cancel” that appears when we send e-mails via Google services.

Delete Files That Have Been Deleted Locally

It is one of the most useful options, in our opinion. First of all, it will become popular among companies having large volumes of data required to be stored for a long time. For example, if you need to store virtual machine files for 1+ year (yes, sometimes such things happen). But sometimes it so happens that a few machines are replaced by new ones and “earlier” versions survive their usefulness.

Generally, it presupposes storage of a few dozen GB of useless data in a cloud for a year. Use Delete files that have been deleted locally if you don’t want to remember such situations. In this case when data are deleted from the server, they will be automatically deleted from the cloud. This option is also recommended to be used with the above mentioned parameter Delay purge for. Just in case.

By the way, all these parameters in our case are related to a certain plan. If you choose Use default on the Retention Policy tab, global options (Tools – Options – Retention Policy) will be applied. This variant is convenient in case of using typical parameters for most backup plans.

Block Mode and Retention Policy

The following question is frequently asked: “I set storage of 3 versions but now I have 5 versions and nothing is deleted. Why?”

The peculiarity of block backup operation with increment versions is in the fact that all versions comprise a single chain. Consequently, it is broken when some links are deleted and part of information in the backup version becomes damaged. Of course, Backup Monkey will not do it with your data.

In order to avoid this situation with the Retention Policy, you just have to generate a new chain of versions in due time. You can do it automatically by means of Full Backup Schedule options of the backup plan:

Schedule full backup with following settings — if you check this box, you will see an additional window with the timetable where you can choose certain periods of full backup copy creation;

 

Run full only if total size of previous block level backups larger than — here you can set a percentage ratio that cannot be exceeded by increment copies in relation to the full version. If their size exceeds the limit, a new full copy containing its own chain of backup copies is created. And all other copies of the earlier chain can be deleted without any consequences.

 

Note: this “full” backup will include only new and modified files (i.e. it will be an incremental backup). It won’t back up all unchanged file versions over again – it allows to save your storage space and costs. At the same time you can be sure that all your files are up to date on the cloud storage. No need to upload all the files selected for backup – you will have duplicated data on your cloud storage.

All data transferred to your cloud storage solution is free.

Data transfer from the cloud is chargeable. The first 1TB/500GB per licence, per year, is free, after that there is a per TB charge (contact your provider for this information).

Licences include the following amount of free cloud storage per year:
Desktop – 500GB
All Servers – 1TB
VM Hosts – 1TB for every 2 cpu slots

Any server/licence using over the limit will incur extra charges, however storage can be pooled across machines (e.g. 3 licences = 3TB of storage over 3 machines). Please consult your solution provider for further information.