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| Tech Support - Frequently Asked Questions |
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Tech Support - Frequently Asked Questions
The following are some of the more common Frequently asked questions we get asked about.
Please check in here first before emailing tech support for help.
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Can you please explain the difference between differential and Incremental Backups with BRU ?
Both differential and incremental backups are backup procedures that save time and disk space by only backing up changed files. But they differ significantly in how they do it — and how useful the result is.
A full backup, of course, backs up all the selected files on a disk. This is the simplest form of backup, but it is also the most time-consuming, space-intensive and the least flexible.
Typically full backups are only done once a week and are part of an overall backup plan. Sometimes a full backup is done after a major change of the data on the disk, such as an operating system upgrade or software install. The relatively long intervals between backups mean that if something goes wrong, a lot of data is going to be lost. Thats why it is wise to back up data between full backups.
Most of the information on a computer changes very slowly or not at all. This includes the applications themselves, the operating system and even most of the user data. Typically, only a small percentage of the information in a partition or disk changes on a daily, or even a weekly, basis. For that reason, it makes sense only to back up the data that has changed on a daily basis. This is the basis of sophisticated backup strategies.
Differential Backups. A differential backup backs up only the files that changed since the last full back. For example, suppose you do a full backup on Sunday. On Monday you back up only the files that changed since Sunday, on Tuesday you back up only the files that changed since Sunday, and so on until the next full backup. Differential backups are quicker than full backups because so much less data is being backed up. But the amount of data being backed up grows with each differential backup until the next full back up. Differential backups are more flexible than full backups, but still time consuming to do more than about once a day, especially as the next full backup approaches.
Incremental Backups. These also back up only the changed data, but they only back up the data that has changed since the last backup — be it a full or incremental backup. They are sometimes called differential incremental backups, while differential backups are sometimes called cumulative incremental backups.
If you do an incremental backup on Tuesday, you only back up the data that changed since the incremental backup on Monday. The result is a much smaller, faster backup. The characteristic of incremental backups is the shorter the time interval between backups, the less data to be backed up. In fact, the backups are so small and so fast you can actually back up every hour, or even more frequently, depending on the work youre doing and how important it is to have current backups.
While incremental backups give much greater flexibility and granularity (time between backups), they have the reputation for taking longer to restore because the backup has to be reconstituted from the last full backup and all the incremental backups since.
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Mac OS X - How do i configure my firewall to work with BRU ?
The easiest way is to show you how to do this via the following :
OS X Firewall Configuration movie (6.8Mb .mov) file
Please right click and Save-Target to your local machine to view it
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Windows - XP Clients are not being backed up
The IPC firewall installed/updated in Windows XP Service Pack 2 blocks the BRU Server communication ports. This is not a BRU Server problem. If you had been previously running the BRU Server agent, you may have problems connecting under SP2. Please check the firewall settings on each client system and make sure that ports 14441-14450 are open for BRU Server tcp traffic. Without making this change, the server will not be able to contact the clients for backup or restore.
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MacOSx - Activating BRU Server via Console
After you have run the demo, and have purchased your full license codes for BRU Server, you need to activate your copy. To do th
is,
launch the BRU Server app, and expand the drop down menu on the left that shows existing licenses, and delete all entries.
Then run Add license:
add the serial number, number of clients, leave the "Primary Serial" empty, add the license key, and save it.
Restart the bru server process for this to take effect. Simply unchekcing and checking the "Server Running" button will accomplish t
his.
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MaxOSx - How do I edit my license file to add additional licenses ?
If you have purchased additional licenses for BRU Server, or have been granted an extension license for your demo,
and need to add them to the primary license,
you will need to edit the license file by hand in a Terminal. Please
use either vi, pico, or BBEdit as the line must end with a Unix end
of line rather than a Mac end of line.
The file to edit is:
"/Applications/BRU Server.app/Contents/MacOS/license"
If this file dosent exist (as in upgrade from DEMO version), please create it.
(This is a sample of the standard demo contents)
# License file for BRU server.
# Copy your license strings here, each on a single line. Later items
# take precedence over previous items.
# Examples:
# 0000-0000:clients:10:AAAA-BBBB-CCCC-DDDD
# 0000-0001:clients:10:primary:0000-0000:1234-1234-1234-1234
Please copy and paste this information and replace with your license information verbatim as the order and case of the
arguments is important.
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All BRU Server Versions - Why doesnt the BRU Server Console correctly display my archives?
Since BRU Server is true client-server, the GUI is not physically connected to the server. Therefore, the state of the server can be quite different than what is displayed in the GUI. If you are in a panel on the GUI and things do not appear as you expect, always hit the "Refresh" button on the current panel to force a refresh of the data displayed.
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All BRU Server Versions - Where do I setup Pre-Post Backup job Scripts?
The location of the pre and post scripts depend on the O/S.
In all cases, the pre/post scripts are created on the client servers, i.e. there
is no global script. For each machine with a bru agent that the user wants a db
shutdown he/she would have to create a pre/post script.
Under OS X it would be in /Applications/BRU Server Agent.app/Contents/MacOS/PRE
Under linux, /usr/local/bru-server/pre
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All BRU Server Versions - How do I restore an archive that was created via Stage Drive, yet has been removed from the database?
Simple, All you need to do is to copy / move the archive file back into your current stage location.
Once this is done, run the housekeeping function. You should now see a message during the housekeeping job about updating the "abandoned archive".
This will reinstate it back into the database, and you should now be able to restore as normal.
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Using BRU LE for OS X to write to DVD or CD media
Please note : This is NOT compatible with BRU Server in any form.
While BRU LE was designed to use tape as its primary backup and
archival media, it is possible to use the command line executable to
create archives that may be written to DVD (or CD). This is not
currently possible from the GUI.
The BRU IO engine understands cascading archive devices and files, so
by supplying multiple -f arguments, BRU will start writing to the first
and automatically continue to successive entries until the operation
completes or the listed archives are depleted (at which point it will
prompt you for new media).
If you wish to use this technique with DVD (or CD) and you have a large
disk mounted at /Volumes/BigDisk to store the temporary archive image
files, you can run BRU from the command line and use something like
this:
bru -cvvvV -Z -N 9 -b 32k \
-f /Volumes/BigDisk/dvd1.img \
-f /Volumes/BigDisk/dvd2.img \
-f /Volumes/BigDisk/dvd3.img \
-f /Volumes/BigDisk/dvd4.img \
-s 4700M -L \"DVD Backup Segment\" \
/path/to/backup
(that can all be on one line)
This command tells BRU to create archive files that can grow up to 4.7G
( 4700M - DVD size ) each and automatically cascade to a new file in
the event the current file reaches 4.7G. Note that for CD media, this
size should be 640M. Ive used 4 files for this example, but you can
use as many as you feel you will need. BRU will only use the number
required to backup the data specified. If you would prefer to
determine how many disks will approximately be used, you can use BRUs
estimate mode (be sure to use 3 v s):
bru -evvvV -f /dev/null -s 4700M /path/to/backup
On a test of 12.6G, we get back:
bru: 3 volume(s), 94863 files, 6323958 archive blocks, 12647916
Kbytes
So BRU will use at most 3 volumes. Of course, by using BRUs
compression this number may be less, but in order to estimate a
compressed archive, BRU would need to actually compress the data during
the estimate run and this would take much longer than the estimate
pass. If you do wish to be more accurate, you can execute a backup to
/dev/null (the bit bucket) and the result reported will include the
compressed values:
bru -cvvvVf /dev/null -Z -N 9 -s 4700M /path/to/backup
On that same test data, we get:
bru: 3 volume(s), 94863 files, 4655672 archive blocks, 9311344
Kbytes
This process took dramatically longer than the previous estimate and
the data compressed down from 12.6G to 9.3G, but will still require 3
volumes.
Once you have the segments written to your disk, you can then write
them out to DVD media using Disk Utility, Toast, or any other tool that
will burn data onto the DVD (or CD) media. Naming the archives with
.img instead of .bru allows you to write them directly to the DVD
media. The resulting DVD media will be BRU format disks, not ISO9660,
HFS+, or UDF, so any system they are placed into will not properly
recognize them. However, you may access them directly with a BRU read
or extract operation (t, i, d, x).
Ive attached a screenshot that displays the info about a piece of DVD
media that contains a BRU archive written in the manner described. The
important field is the "Disk Identifier" field. In this case, it is
"disk2". To view a list of the data on the DVD with BRU, you can use
the following command:
bru -tvvvf /dev/disk2
If the backup operation exceeded the capacity of a single archive, BRU
will prompt you for the next volume when restoring, verifying, or
getting a file listing, so be sure to properly label the media in the
order it is written.
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© 2004-2005 Protek Developments Pty Ltd
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