You can register additional commands to run before- or after any backup job. For maximum flexibility, commands can be registered
for a Protected Item (e.g. to dump a database), or
for a Storage Vault (e.g. to perform custom network authentication), or
for a Schedule (e.g. to shut down the computer afterward).
During a backup job, the commands are run in this order:
Schedule Before
Protected Item Before
Storage Vault Before
Backup Job
Storage Vault After
Protected Item After
Schedule After
Shell built-ins can be used as part of the command execution - the specified command is passed to either cmd.exe or /bin/sh as appropriate for your operating system.
Retention is the concept of determining what data should be kept, for how long, as well as when and what data can be safely removed in order to storage space. Retention rules can be configured for individual Protected Items, or for Storage Vaults.
Protected Item Retention
In the Retention section of the Protected Item, you can configure a retention policy to apply when backing up this Protected Item to a specific Storage Vault. If no policy is configured for a specific Storage Vault, the default retention policy will apply.
The retention section will display (default) to indicate that the Storage Vault default rules apply, Keep (X rules) to indicate that specific Protected Item retention rules have been applied.
Retention (Storage Vault)
Storage Vault retention rules are the default for all data stored, unless a Protected Item has its own set of retention rules. When a Storage Vault is first created, the default, no-change-by-policy retention rule is 'Keep all data forever'. This can be automatically altered by user-profile policy, or by later manual changes.
If a Protected Item is given its own set of retention rules, these Protected Item rules will normally take precedence over the Storage Vault retention rules.
If a Protected Item is removed, or has its retention rules removed, then the Storage Vault retention rules will take precedence once more, and the data associated with the Protected Item will be kept, or removed, in accordance with the Storage Vault retention rules.
Example usages of retention rules:
Change the default Storage Vault retention rule to 'Keep all data for 60 days', plus
add a Protected Item rule to keep all snapshots for 90-days, plus
add a Protected Item rule to keep a representative snapshot from each week, on a Monday at 6am, for 2 years.
A customer permanently revokes a single device. The device is revoked from the user-profile list of devices. Once the device is deleted, the Protected Items for the device are also deleted, as well as any retention rules. The snapshot data will now be governed by the Storage Vault retention rules. If no changes have been made, the default Storage Vault retention rules are 'Keep all data for 30-days', so the unwanted data from the Protected Item would be completely deleted by the 31st day.
Explanation
When you revoke a device, it will remove all its Protected Items, and all of their retention rules.
If the user-profile still has at least one live device that stores data in the Storage Vault, it will run the retention pass into the Vault, eventually deleting the old Protected Item data.
Example Solution
Set all Storage Vaults to have a changed-default retention rule of 'keep all data for 30 days', or some other period.
When a device is revoked, or a Protected Item is removed from the list of Items to protect, the next retention pass will fallback to the Storage Vault rules.
A Storage Vault retention period of 30 days will allow for mistakes to be discovered. A mistakenly-deleted Protected Item can be reinstated into the list of things to protect; or the snapshots of the Protected Item can be restored via another device registered to the same user-profile.
A Storage Vault retention period of 30 days will allow for genuinely-unwanted data to be automatically removed at the end of 30 days, thereby keeping storage sizes to a minimum.
Retention Pass
A "retention pass" is the act of cleaning up data from the Storage Vault that exceeds the configured retention policy.
During a retention pass, the desktop application looks at each backed-up job within the Storage Vault and determines whether it meets the retention policy. If the retention policy states that the backed-up job can be safely removed, the backed-up job is removed from the Storage Vault. Once all backed-up jobs are checked against the retention policy, any data chunks that are no longer referenced by a backed-up job can then be pruned to save disk space.
Automatic retention passes
A retention pass may run automatically after each backup job.
An automatic retention pass is not necessarily critical, and so if a backup job comes to an end without a retention pass being possible to run, the retention pass is not immediately "overdue".
The "overdue" rules for automatic retention passes are based on the time since the previous successful retention pass, and, the number of jobs exceeding the configured retention policy. The exact rules are still being determined and are subject to change in future versions.
As of version 21.9.3, the rules are as follows:
If the device is a "high power" device:
Last retention pass
0-2 jobs exceeding policy
3-9 jobs
10-49 jobs
50+ jobs
less than 24 hours ago
None
Attempt
Attempt
Require
between 24 hours ago and 14 days ago
None
Attempt
Require
Require
between 14 days ago and 21 days ago
Attempt
Attempt
Require
Require
over 21 days ago, or never ran
Require
Require
Require
Require
If the device is a "low power" device:
Last retention pass
0-2 jobs exceeding policy
3-9 jobs
10-49 jobs
50+ jobs
less than 24 hours ago
None
None
None
Attempt
between 24 hours ago and 14 days ago
None
None
Attempt
Require
between 14 days ago and 21 days ago
None
Attempt
Attempt
Require
over 21 days ago, or never ran
Attempt
Require
Require
Require
In the above tables,
"None" means that no automatic retention pass will be attempted at the end of the backup job
"Attempt" means that eazyBackup will attempt a retention pass, but not throw an error if it could not be performed
"Require" means that eazyBackup will attempt a retention pass, and will throw an error if it could not be performed
A device is considered a "high power" device if it meets 2/3 of the criteria:
over 7 days uptime
running Windows Server or Linux
having over 8 GB physical RAM
Manual retention passes
You can run a retention pass for a Storage Vault on demand, by right-clicking the Storage Vault within the backup application.
In this case because the action was explicitly taken, an error will be raised if the job fails to be performed for any reason.
Log into Your Client Area to access your dashboard.
From your dashboard, under the PLANS dropdown menu, choose the product license you require.
You'll see Workstation and Fileserver licensing for both the eazyBackup and Private Label (OBC) products.
* each license can also be chosen with the DiskImage add-on if you would like the ability to create an image backup as well as the standard file/folder backup.
Once you’ve chosen your product, you'll move through a few quick questions setting up the license - choose a Username, Password and billing term (monthly, yearly).
each license comes with 1TB storage - it is at this stage where you'll be able to add on additional storage if you require more than 1TB. The same applies to add-on devices - if you require more than 1 endpoint (device), you can add on another device if needed.
- Add-on storage and devices can also be applied at a later date if/when required. * please contact your ezB account representative if you have any questions.
Click CONTINUE.
The last step will ask for your Partner Validation (Promo) Code. Each Partner/Reseller is issued a Validation code.
Enter your code and click "VALIDATE CODE".
Click CHECKOUT.
At the end of the transaction you'll be able to download the product software and carry on with your setup and deployment.
* Using your validation code will extend billing for 30days. Your activation code can be used with every licence you set up, whether it be a backup account for a client or a prospective client who's just Trialing. * Backup accounts/licensing can be cancelled anytime within 30days. You can do this from within your dashboard area, or by contacting your ezB rep.
The default backup report is sent immediately when a backup job of any status completes.
It is possible to customize the email reports to suit your specific needs.
You can filter on a large number of criteria including but not limited to the job's type classification, status, start time, duration, Protected Item, and Storage Vault. For advanced queries, the search system supports boolean logic (AND/OR) and arbitrary-depth clause grouping.
Steps to Enable Custom Reports
Open the eazyBackup application, from the Settings tab click the "Account" button. Select the email address with the System default reports and click the Pen button to modify. Tick the box to enable custom reports and click the + to create a new filter.
Only Send Reports When Jobs Fail
It is possible to filter reports so that you only receive an report email when the backup jobs fails. To accomplish this, you need to set the filter to "At least one of" and create a status filter for each condition where you want to receive an email. "Status" "equal" "Variable"
Warning Status - This means the backup completed but the backup could be incomplete, possibly some files were missed.
Error Status - This status means the backup failed and did not complete
Cancelled - The job was manually cancelled by the customer
Missed - The job did not run at the scheduled time
Skipped - Another backup job was already running, the next schedule job was skipped
This feature requires Windows 7, or Windows Server 2008 R2, or later.
eazyBackup now supports taking disk image backups.
This backup type is only applicable when running on Windows. Disk Image backup on other operating systems is not currently supported by this Protected Item type.
When using the "Disk Image" Protected Item type, on the Items tab, you can select any currently-attached drives for backup, or individual partitions from any drive. It is possible to select "all drives" and exclude individual disks or partitions.
Any change to the partition structure of a drive will cause that drive to be recognized differently in eazyBackup. If you had selected such a drive, eazyBackup will warn you that the drive can no longer be found. You would need to reselect the drive and/or partitions in the eazyBackup app interface.
eazyBackup feeds raw data from each disk partition directly into its chunking deduplication engine. The disk image is deduplicated, compressed, and encrypted as it is being saved to the Storage Vault. No extra temporary spool data is generated and no additional disk space is required.
The backed-up disk image data will deduplicate with other data inside the Storage Vault. A 'Files and Folders' type backup of the same data volumes should achieve a high degree of space savings. The effectiveness of any such deduplication may be negatively affected by: (A) filesystem fragmentation on the physical volume; and/or (B) small file sizes.
eazyBackup does not currently allow additional file exclusions within a partition. A future version of eazyBackup may allow selecting files to exclude from supported filesystems (NTFS and FAT32). The files will appear to exist on the resulting disk image but contain only compressed zero ranges, saving disk space.
Unused disk sectors
On supported filesystems, eazyBackup will exclude unused space from the disk in the backup image. Unused space is represented as zero ranges, that are compressed during the backup phase. When restoring the disk image, the file will include uncompressed zero ranges. Please see the "Supported volume types" section for more information about what filesystems are compatible with this feature. You may disable skipping free space by enabling the "Include unused disk sectors for forensic data recovery" option.
The disk must be set as Online in Windows for eazyBackup to exclude unused space. If the disk is set as Offline in Windows, eazyBackup is unable to exclude free space, even from a supported filesystem. You can change a disk's Online/Offline state from Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) or from diskpart.
If a disk extent does not contain a filesystem (e.g. if it is a raw byte range), then eazyBackup is unable to determine which disk sectors are needed. If you select a "Raw byte range" extent, it is backed up in its entirety, even if the "Include unused disk sectors for forensic data recovery" option is selected. If the raw data contains mostly zero bytes, it will be highly compressed during the backup phase and when stored as chunks in the Storage Vault; however, if the raw data contains mostly random data, it will not compress well.
eazyBackup always skips backing up the pagefile of the booted Windows installation (pagefile.sys / swapfile.sys), even if the "Include unused disk sectors for forensic data recovery" option is enabled.
Supported volume types
Please refer to the following table of filesystem support notes:
Filesystem
Skip unused space
Consistency
NTFS (Microsoft)
Yes
Snapshot
ReFS (Microsoft)
Yes
Snapshot
FAT32 (Microsoft)
Yes
If volume is not in use
exFat (Microsoft)
Yes
If volume is not in use
UDF (Microsoft)
No
If volume is not in use
Third-party filesystem drivers (e.g. WinBtrfs, Ext2Ifs, Paragon Linuxfs, ZFSin) have not been officially tested against eazyBackup.
Please refer to the following table of special volume type notes:
Volume type
Supported
Notes
Basic disks
Yes
Fully supported
Dynamic disks
Yes
The underlying volume will appear as "Raw byte range". For a span or striped volume, you should make sure to only select the dynamic volume for backup, not the underlying raw disk. Please also note that Dynamic disks are deprecated in Windows 8 and above.
Storage Spaces
Yes
The underlying volume will appear as "Orphaned volume". You should make sure to select only the Storage Space for backup.
Bitlocker
Yes, while unlocked
The backup can succeed if the Bitlocker volume is unlocked. If the Bitlocker volume is locked, it should be unlocked before running the backup job, otherwise you may experience an error This drive is locked by BitLocker Drive Encryption. You must unlock this drive from Control Panel.. The resulting partition backup is not protected by Bitlocker and you may extract single files from it without the Bitlocker encryption key, as described below. If you restore to a physical partition, you may wish to re-enable Bitlocker after restoring, via the Windows Control Panel.
Cluster Shared Volume
not tested
not tested
Truecrypt / Veracrypt
not tested
not tested
Please refer to the following table of physical media notes:
Physical media
Supported
Notes
Hard drive (512n)
Yes
Fully supported
Hard drive (AF)
Yes
512e and 4Kn (Advanced Format) harddrives are supported.
Mounted VHD / VHDX
Yes
Fully supported
Removable USB drive
Yes
Some removable drives cannot be completely offlined by the operating system; a restore operation back to the physical removable USB drive may be interrupted by other programs on the PC.
Remote iSCSI LUN
not tested
not tested
Mounted ISO
No
Only harddrive (HDD / SSD) disks are supported.
Optical drive
No
Only harddrive (HDD / SSD) disks are supported.
Floppy drive
No
Only harddrive (HDD / SSD) disks are supported.
Please refer to the following table of partition table notes:
Partition table
Supported
Notes
MBR
Yes
Fully supported, including Extended partitions (EBR)
GPT
Yes
Fully supported
Consistency
eazyBackup tries to take a VSS snapshot of the selected partition (without invoking any specific writers for quiesence). If this succeeds, the partition backup is crash-consistent.
eazyBackup tries to lock the volume handle. If this succeeds, the partition backup is crash-consistent.
Otherwise, eazyBackup will print a warning to the job log, and back up the partition in a rolling way. The backup may be inconsistent if other processes are writing to the partition at the same time.
Restoring
eazyBackup stores the disk image files in VMDK format. You can restore these files normally using eazyBackup.
There is one plain-text VMDK descriptor file representing metadata about the whole drive, plus separate raw image files for each partition's extent on the disk.
Partitions of the disk that were not selected for backup are represented as zero extents in the VMDK descriptor file. This means the restored disk image appears to have the full disk size, even if only a small amount of partitions inside it were selected. The zero extents will be compressed inside the Storage Vault.
On Windows, the eazyBackup Backup desktop app offers the option to restore the disk images either back to physical partitions, or as files.
Recovery of single files, with spooling
You can restore the VMDK disk images and then extract single files from them.
At the time of writing, we recommend the following software:
Free and Open Source, Windows (GUI) and macOS / Linux (command-line)
Can open VMDK disk descriptor and also the individual extent files
Supports many filesystems, including NTFS, FAT32, EXT 2/3/4, UDF, HFS, SquashFS
Known issues:
When loading the VMDK disk descriptor directly instead of the extent files, if no partition table is present (i.e. "Raw byte range" containing the MBR/GPT area at the start of the disk was not selected for backup) then the descriptor will only show an interior 'disk.img' file instead of partition contents
You can workaround this issue by opening the individual partition extent files
Early versions of 7-Zip had only limited support for disk image features. Please manually ensure your 7-Zip installation is up-to-date, as 7-Zip does not have a built-in software update feature.
When loading the VMDK disk descriptor directly instead of the extent files, the disk partitions can be discovered, but mounting fails - both of the individual partitions and also when attempting to mount the VMDK as a raw disk ("Physical Disk Emulation" mode)
You can workaround this issue by selecting the individual extent files to mount (works using "Logical Drive Emulation" mode)
Install the guestfs-tools package (Debian/Ubuntu: libguestfs-tools, SuSE: guestfs-tools, RHEL/CentOS/Fedora: libguestfs-tools-c)
Supports mounting the VMDK disk descriptor file using an unprivileged FUSE backend
Usage: guestmount -a disk.vmdk
Loop device
Free and Open Source (part of the Linux kernel, command-line)
Use the losetup tool (from util-linux)
Supports mounting individual partition extents, but not the VMDK disk descriptor file
Recovery of single files, without spooling
Depends on the 'live mount restore' planned feature
Booting into a recovered Windows OS installation
When migrating a Windows OS installation to different hardware, any products which use hardware identifiers as a software licensing component may lose their activation status. This includes, but is not limited to
Windows OS activation, and
eazyBackup device detection.
The "C:" does not contain everything needed to boot an operating system. For best results when creating a bootable image, you may wish to ensure that your backup includes
the disk's non-partition space (that includes the GPT/MBR partition table)
the "System Reserved Partition", if present (that contains the volume boot record)
the EFI ESP partition, if present (on GPT disks and/or UEFI-booting machines)
Windows 8.1, Windows 10, and later
Current versions of Windows do generally handle being booted on dissimilar hardware without any issues.
Earlier versions of Windows
When you boot a Windows OS installation, it may automatically become specialized for the running hardware (physical or virtual). This improves performance, but can prevent the same OS installation from booting on different hardware if the hardware is sufficiently different. The tolerable differences depend on the hardware in question.
If you experience errors booting a backed-up Windows OS disk image on different hardware (physical or virtual), it may be necessary to prepare the Windows installation for hardware-independence. You can do this by running sysprep inside the installation before taking the disk image; or, you can do this by booting a Windows recovery environment, mounting the image, and running sysprep against the attached disk.
The sysprep tool is installed in the C:\Windows\system32\Sysprep\ directory and is available on all Windows SKUs. From Windows 8.1 onward, its GUI is deprecated in favor of command-line use.
Filesystem smaller than target volume
When restoring a smaller partition into a larger one, eazyBackup will automatically extend the restored filesystem to the fill the target partition. This feature is available on Windows if the filesystem driver supports it (the NTFS and ReFS file systems).
In other cases, the result will be a large partition containing a small filesystem. It appears to have the large size in Disk Management (that looks at the partitions) but the small size in This PC (that looks at the filesystem). The extra space from the new larger partition cannot be practically used until the filesystem is extended, to fill the partition around it.
On Windows, you can independently repeat eazyBackupet's attempt at manually extending the filesystem to fill its containing partition by
opening Command Prompt as administrator
run diskpart.exe
type list volume
Identify the target volume from the list, and then type select volume TARGET_NUMBER
type extend filesystem
On Linux, you can resolve this issue by using the ntfsresize command.
Filesystem larger than target volume
eazyBackup does not support restoring a large backed-up partition into a smaller physical partition. If you are trying to do this, please shrink the partition using the OS's partition manager prior to performing the backup.
Recovery to physical hardware
In order to restore to physical hardware, the target disk or partition should be unmounted. eazyBackup may be able to do this automatically from your current booted OS, if no programs are using the target drive (e.g. for a non-boot drive); but in order to restore to your boot drive, you should first reboot the PC into a recovery environment.
The eazyBackup desktop app supports creating a USB Recovery Media from the wizard on the Account screen.
The following options are available:
WinRE
WinRE is the default option for creating USB Recovery Media within the eazyBackup application.
Selecting this option allows you to create a minimal USB Recovery Media based on the Windows Recovery Environment. It requires a removable USB drive of at least 2GB in size. The size requirements may be larger if additional drivers get installed into the image.
This option requires that Windows Recovery Environment is installed and available on your PC. If it is not installed, you may be able to install it via the reagentc /info command.
If you choose to create a WinRE drive from inside the eazyBackup Backup desktop application, the resulting USB drive is created as follows:
Choose an available removable USB drive
Select options
You can choose whether the current OS drivers are embedded into the image
This feature extracts in-use third-party drivers from the current OS using the dism /export-driver technology. The exact selected drivers may depend on your running OS. In our experience it mostly includes OEM drivers. The included drivers could be of any type (chipset/network/graphics/audio/usb/pcie/storage/...). There are no guarantees about what drivers will be added, but it should generally be helpful in making sure you can use the device.
The drive is created
No additional download is required to create the drive
The drive uses a hybrid MBR/EFI boot and should boot correctly on both MBR and UEFI PCs
The drive uses the Microsoft ntldr bootloader and should boot correctly on UEFI PCs requiring Secure Boot. If you experience issues booting the USB Recovery Media drive, you could try to temporarily disable Secure Boot from your UEFI firmware menu
The drive preserves the custom branding of the installed eazyBackup application
The drive impersonates your own Device ID and will appear to eazyBackup as the same device (when booted on the same physical hardware)
The drive will be either x86_32 only, or x86_64 only, depending on your installed Windows OS version
When booting the drive, the eazyBackup desktop app will appear directly. You can use eazyBackupto restore data. When exiting eazyBackup, the Windows Recovery Environment will appear, allowing you to perform any other pre-boot tasks (e.g. boot repair or access Command Prompt) before rebooting the PC normally.
Limitations
Some features are unavailable from inside the created WinRE USB drive:
Wifi support
Workaround: Connect to the network via wired Ethernet instead
VSS for backup operations
Workaround: It should not be necessary to use VSS for backup operations from inside the WinRE boot environment
The Windows Disk Management GUI
Workaround: Use diskpart commands
A future version of eazyBackup may be able to resolve these issues.
The resulting WinRE USB drive is based on your PC's version of WinRE. WinRE is provided and updated by Microsoft and contains a version of the Windows kernel that is specific to the latest feature upgrade (e.g. 1903 / 1909 / 2004). For best results when using the "fix Windows boot problems" feature after a full disk restore, you should avoid using an old USB Recovery Media drive for a newer version of Windows (e.g. using a 2004-based WinRE should be able to boot-repair a 1903-based Windows installation, but perhaps not vice-versa).
Windows To Go
Windows To Go is an alternative option for creating USB Recovery Media within the eazyBackup application.
Selecting this option allows you to create a full Windows boot environment. It requires an external harddrive of at least 32GB in size.
This option requires the Portable Workspace Creator (pwcreator.exe) to be installed and available on your PC. This tool is included in Windows Server 2012, Windows 8 Pro, Windows 8.1 Pro, Windows 10 Pro but was removed in Windows 10 update 2004 owing to the difficulty of deploying critical software updates to this platform.
No customisations are applied to the generated Windows To Go boot drive. You should boot into the drive, then install eazyBackup normally and use it to perform recovery operations such as restoring data.
Other boot environment
You may also create a recovery environment in any other way. Either Windows or Linux can be used as a suitable recovery environment. Some possible methods include
creating a Linux bootable USB drive, or
using a third-party tool like Rufus to create a Windows To Go drive, or
using recovery media from your PC OEM vendor (e.g. Lenovo / Dell / HP)
In these cases you will need to manually launch the eazyBackup Backup app once booted into the recovery environment.
Restore from Windows boot environment
From the Windows boot environment, run eazyBackup, and open the Restore wizard. The Restore wizard inside eazyBackup allows restoring the backed-up disks and partitions directly to your physical disks and partitions, without requiring any temporary spool space.
You can use the "edit" button to repartition the local drives using Windows Disk Management. After doing so, use the "refresh" button to refresh the local disks and partitions for restore.
To do so:
Select a backed-up disk or partition to restore, from the left-hand pane
Select a target disk or partition to write to, from the right-hand pane
Click the "Add to restore queue" button
Repeat steps 1-3 as necessary
Click the "Restore" button to begin the restore job.
Restore from Linux boot environment
To restore an entire disk, with spooling:
Restore all the *.vmdk disk image files to a spool drive.
Convert the main vmdk descriptor file to a physical drive, using the following command: qemu-img convert disk.vmdk -O raw /dev/sdx
Alternatively, you can mount the main vmdk descriptor file as an NBD volume if your kernel has NBD support (you may need to modprobe nbd first):
Restore just the disk.vmdk file (without the data extents), and open it in a text editor in order to read the partition sizes.
Recreate partitions to the exact target size.
Then you can restore single partitions without any local spool disk, using the "Program Output" restore option, and selecting only a single partition file for restore: dd of=/dev/sdx1 bs=8M
To restore a single partition, with spooling:
Recreate a partition to the exact target size.
Restore the target extent file (e.g. disk-f0000.vmdk)
Use dd to clone the selected extent file (e.g. disk-f0000.vmdk) to a physical partition (e.g. /dev/sdx1) as follows: dd if=disk-f0000.vmdk of=/dev/sdx1 bs=8M status=progress
To restore a single partition, without spooling:
Recreate a partition to the exact target size.
Select the file for backup, and use the "Program Output" restore option to stream the file into a command like dd of=/dev/sdx1 bs=8M, choosing a single partition only
A future version of eazyBackup will add built-in support for physical disk restores from a Linux boot environment.
Recovery to local VM
You can attach the *.vmdk disk image files to a new- or existing Virtual Machine. If the disk image contains a Windows OS installation, it may be bootable.
Virtualisation platform
Supports *.vmdk file format
VMware
Yes
QEMU
Yes
Virtualbox
Yes
Hyper-V
No - must convert to VHD or VHDX format
If your PC boots using EFI - for instance, if the source disk contains an EFI System Partition (ESP) - then you should configure the VM to boot in EFI mode ("Generation 2" in Hyper-V). Otherwise, you should configure the VM to boot in "Legacy" / MBR mode ("Generation 1" in Hyper-V).
Recovery to cloud server
You can upload the *.vmdk disk image files to a cloud provider. Depending on the cloud provider's capabilities, it may be possible to boot a new VM from them, or to attach them as extra disks to an existing VM.
If the disk image contains a Windows OS installation, it may be bootable. Not all cloud providers support booting Windows OS installations.
This reference article lists every endpoints used by eazyBackup and OBC. If your organization restricts computers on your network from connecting to the Internet, this article lists the Fully Qualified Domain Names (FQDNs) and ports that you should include in your 'outbound allow lists' to ensure your computers can successfully use the eazyBackup and OBC services.
To use eazyBackup, the following endpoints need to be accessible to client computers
You can cancel a running backup job in the backup app, select the Backup tab, click on the Protected Item with the running status icon.
Selecting the running item will reveal the details pane for that job which includes the Cancel button.
Procedure to force stop abandoned backup
If the backup job appears to be in-progress but cannot be stopped and is no longer showing activity, the job may be abandoned. Please use the following procedure to stop the backup process.
Running backup jobs can be cancelled from within the desktop application or from the Control Panel.
Cancel Running Backup from Application
First, try the procedure detailed above to cancel the running job from within the application. If there is no response using the Cancel button in the app, please use the Control Panel to cancel the job.
"Retention" is the concept of classifying backed-up data to determine what data should be kept and what data can be safely removed in order to free up disk space. For instance, you may choose to keep backed-up data from the last 30 days or all data from the last 100 backup jobs. Keep in mind any data older than this is unlikely to be useful and can be safely removed.
Retention Pass
After each backup job, a "retention pass" runs for the Storage Vault. You can also run a retention pass for a Storage Vault on demand, by right-clicking the Storage Vault within the eazyBackup application.
During a retention pass, eazyBackup looks at each backed-up job within the Storage Vault and determines whether it meets the retention policy. If the retention policy states that the backed-up job can be safely removed, the backed-up job is removed from the Storage Vault. Once all backed-up jobs are checked against the retention policy, any data chunks that are no longer referenced by a backed-up job can then be pruned to save disk space.
Preferences
eazyBackup allows you to configure retention for a Storage Vault as well as for a Protected Item / Storage Vault pair.
The retention rule for the pair will be used in preference to the retention rule for the Storage Vault. The retention rule for the Storage Vault is therefore only applied when:
there is no overridden retention rule for the Protected Item / Storage Vault pair; or
the Protected Item is unknown, deleted, or belongs to a different eazyBackup user account
Retention policies
There are two categories of retention policy:
A policy that keeps all data forever, and
A policy that keeps data as long as it falls within any of a set of configurable ranges. You can combine multiple ranges to create a more complex policy.
Retention ranges
A retention range is a time period or job count during which a backup job should be kept.
The following ranges are available:
Range
Parameters
Description
Last [...] backups
Specify a number of backups to keep.
If the backup job was within the last X backups, then the backup job will be kept
All backups in the last [...]
Specify a number of days, weeks, and/or months.
If the backup job occurred recently within the specified range, then the backup job will be kept
All backups newer than a specific date
Specify a specific date.
If the backup job occurred after that specific date, then the backup job will be kept
One backup each day, for the last [...] days
Specify a number of days.
eazyBackup will keep the single first backup job from each of that most recent days
One backup each week, for the last [...] weeks
Specify a number of weeks, and a day of the week
eazyBackup will keep the single first backup job that occurred on that day of the week, for each of that number of most recent weeks
One backup each month, for the last [...] months
Specify a number of months, and a calendar date
eazyBackup will keep the single first backup job that occurred on that calendar date, for each of that number of most recent months
The following configuration options are available:
Option
Requirement
Description
Local Path
Mandatory
The path to store data
Simultaneous connections
In this mode, eazyBackup does not place a limit on the number of simultaneous accesses to the storage.
Windows
Some versions of Windows have a limit of 255 characters in a path name. eazyBackup works around this issue, so there is no restriction on the path length that you use for local storage.
If the storage path is a mapped network drive, then ensure that you consider any path restrictions on both the mapped drive and its source drive.
SFTP
Data will be stored on an SFTP server, such as OpenSSH.
Configuration
The following configuration options are available:
Option
Requirement
Description
Address
Mandatory
The hostname for the SFTP server. You may specify a port by adding a :22 suffix. The default port is 22.
Username
Mandatory
The username to log in to the SFTP server.
Remote path
Optional
A remote path or subdirectory where data will be stored on the SFTP server. If the path starts with /, it is an absolute path. If the path does not start with /, the path is relative to the SFTP user's home directory.
Authentication
Mandatory
The authentication type to log in to the SFTP server. Must be one of Native, Password, or Private key. In Native mode, the system OpenSSH configuration is used to log in to the server.
Password
Required when Authentication is Password
The account password.
Private key
Required only when Authentication is Private key
The account private key, unencrypted, in OpenSSH format.
Verification
Required only when Authentication is not Native
Whether to verify host keys for the SFTP server. Must be one of Native, Allow any host key, or Custom path to known_hosts file. In Native mode, the system OpenSSH configuration is used to check known hosts.
known_hosts file
Required only when Verification is Custom path only
A local file path, used to keep track of SFTP server host keys.
Simultaneous connections
eazyBackup has a limit of 10 simultaneous operations to an SFTP destination.
If multiple protected items are running simultaneously to an SFTP Storage Vault in eazyBackup, the number of network connections may be higher.
FTP
Data will be stored on an FTP server, such as FileZilla Server or ProFTPd.
WARNING: The FTP protocol has a number of inherent limitations, making this storage type a "last resort" for accessing certain remote data locations. If possible, you may achieve better performance and connectivity by using an alternative server, such as SFTP or the "Local Path" type over a mounted SMB or NFS share.
Configuration
The following configuration options are available:
Option
Requirement
Description
Address
Mandatory
The hostname for the FTP server. You may specify a port by adding a :21 suffix. The default port is 21.
Username
Mandatory
The username to log in to the FTP server.
Password
Mandatory
The account password.
Use default home directory
Optional
Whether to store data in the FTP user's home directory.
Custom directory
Required only when Use default home directory is disabled
A remote path to store data in. Paths are relative unless anchored with a leading /.
Simultaneous connections
eazyBackup makes 1 single network connection to the FTP server.
If multiple operations are running simultaneously to an FTP Storage Vault in eazyBackup, the number of network connections may be higher.
Amazon S3
Data will be stored in an Amazon S3 bucket.
With Amazon S3, bucket names are globally unique across all of the standard regions, so it's not necessary to specify which region the bucket is contained in (e.g. us-east-1, eu-central-1) as this can be determined automatically. The only exception is if you are storing data in an isolated region such as China (Beijing) Isolated Region.
If you specify a bucket name that does not exist, eazyBackup will attempt to create it automatically in the default US East (N. Virginia) region.
It's possible to connect to Amazon S3 using the "S3-compatible" storage type, however, a dedicated option is available owing to the popularity of this service.
Configuration
The following configuration options are available:
Option
Requirement
Description
Region
Mandatory
The endpoint for accessing Amazon S3.
Access key
Mandatory
The access key for the Amazon S3 account
Secret key
Mandatory
The secret key for the Amazon S3 account
Bucket
Mandatory
The globally unique name of the storage bucket
Subdirectory
Optional
A prefix to add to all stored blobs. This may be useful to isolate eazyBackup's
data within the bucket if the bucket is being shared with another application.
Simultaneous connections
eazyBackup makes up to 10 network connections to the Amazon S3 server.
If multiple operations are running simultaneously to an Amazon S3 Storage Vault in eazyBackup, the number of network connections may be higher.
Google Cloud Storage
Google Cloud Storage is an S3-compatible storage product within the Google Cloud Platform.
It's possible to connect to Google Cloud Storage using the "S3-compatible" storage type, however, a dedicated option is available owing to the popularity of this service.
You can retrieve credentials under the "Interoperability" section of the Google Cloud Platform web interface.
Configuration
Option
Requirement
Description
Access key
Mandatory
The access key for the Google Cloud Platform account
Secret key
Mandatory
The secret key for the Google Cloud Platform account
Bucket
Mandatory
The globally unique name of the storage bucket
Subdirectory
Optional
A prefix to add to all stored blobs. This may be useful to isolate eazyBackup's data
within the bucket if the bucket is being shared with another application.
Simultaneous connections
eazyBackup makes up to 10 network connections to the Google Cloud Storage server.
If multiple operations are running simultaneously to a Google Cloud Storage Storage Vault in eazyBackup the number of network connections may be higher.
S3-compatible
The protocol for object storage on Amazon S3 eventually became widespread enough to be called a pseudo-standard. A number of alternative storage providers offer S3-compatible object storage, in order to interoperate with the large body of available software and services surrounding this pseudo-standard.
API Compatibility
eazyBackup uses S3's streaming APIs to improve performance. You should ensure that any S3-compatible server implements streaming APIs in order to maintain compatibility.
Configuration
Option
Requirement
Description
Hostname
Mandatory
The hostname for the S3-compatible server.
Access key
Mandatory
The access key for your user account
Secret key
Mandatory
The secret key for your user account
Bucket
Mandatory
The bucket in which to store all data
Subdirectory
Optional
A prefix to apply to all objects stored in the bucket
Use encrypted transmission
Optional
Whether to access the S3-compatible server using the HTTPS protocol.
Data is encrypted and authenticated regardless of whether HTTPS is in use.
Simultaneous connections
eazyBackup makes up to 10 network connections to the S3-compatible Storage server.
If multiple operations are running simultaneously to an S3-compatible Storage Vault in eazyBackup, the number of network connections may be higher.
Azure Blob Storage
Azure Blob Storage is a public-cloud object storage service operated by Microsoft under the Azure branding.
Compatible implementations
eazyBackup's support for Azure Blob Storage can also be used to connect to third-party storage services that are compatible with the Azure Blob Storage API.
You can enter a custom "Realm Address" in the configuration to use a third-party storage service.
eazyBackup is compatible with storage providers based on
Microsoft Azure Stack
Configuration
Option
Requirement
Description
Realm address
Mandatory
The hostname or URL for the Azure Blob Storage realm (usually core.windows.net).
Use a scheme-qualified URI (e.g. http://) in order to toggle TLS.
Account name
Mandatory
The name of your user account
Account key
Mandatory
The key for your user account
Container
Mandatory
The container in which to store all data
Subdirectory
Optional
A prefix to apply to all objects stored in the container
Simultaneous connections
A limit of 10 simultaneous operations take place to an Azure Blob Storage destination.
If multiple operations are running simultaneously to a Azure Blob Storage -based Storage Vault in eazyBackup, the number of network connections may be higher.
On the 'General' tab, you can give a name to the Storage Vault. You can use any name; if you have multiple Storage Vaults within an account, we would recommend using a name that identifies the content and/or purpose of the particular Storage Vault.
On this tab, you can also configure a retention policy for the Storage Vault.
Quota (Storage Vault)
When a backup job is performed, the total size of the Storage Vault is measured and checked against your quota limit. As the job proceeds, the amount of uploaded data is compared against the remaining available size, and the backup job will be aborted once reaching this limit.
After a quota has been exceeded
A backup job that is abandoned as a result of reaching its Storage Vault quota does not remove the chunks that were uploaded to the Storage Vault. Future backup jobs will almost certainly fail immediately. In this situation, you have two choices:
Contact eazyBackup to increase your Storage Vault quota and retry the backup. This will cause any existing chunks in the vault to be re-used, accelerating the backup quickly up to the point where it was interrupted; or
Use the "Apply retention rules now" feature to clear unused chunks from the Storage Vault. This will reduce the data size within the Storage Vault and allow future backups to proceed
You should choose one of the two options depending on your particular situation.
Storage tab
On the "Storage" tab, you can configure the data storage location for this Storage Vault. A number of types are available, including local disk storage, network accounts, and cloud storage providers.
Commands
The "Commands" feature on a Protected Item works the same way as for "Commands" on a Storage Vault or on a Schedule. For more information about the Commands feature, please see the Commands article.
Encryption
eazyBackup automatically enables encryption for all Storage Vaults. This is not customizable; the "Encryption" tab solely serves to indicate that fact.
Storage Vault encryption is initialized upon first-use. You can use this tab to tell whether a Storage Vault has been initialized with an encryption key and when the initialization was performed (according to records in the user account profile).
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