4. Backing up and recovering your data
Many backup and recovery solutions are available for use with Windows Server 2012. When selecting a backup utility, you need to keep in mind the types of backups you want to perform and the types of data you are backing up.
Windows Server 2012 includes Windows Server Backup and backup command-line tools. Windows Server Backup is a basic and easy-to-use backup
and recovery utility. When the related feature is installed on a
server, you’ll find a related option on the Administrative Tools menu.
The utility is also added to Server Manager. A set of backup and
recovery commands is accessible through the Wbadmin command-line tool. You run and use Wbadmin from an elevated, administrator command prompt. Type wbadmin /? for a full list of supported commands.
You can use Windows Server Backup to perform full, copy, and
incremental backups on the local system. You cannot use Windows Server
Backup to perform differential backups. Windows Server Backup uses the
Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS)
to create fast, block-level backups of the operating system, files and
folders, and disk volumes. After you create the first full backup, you
can configure Windows Server Backup to perform either full or
incremental backups on a recurring, scheduled basis automatically.
When you use Windows Server Backup, you need separate, dedicated
media for storing archives of scheduled backups. Although you cannot
back up to tapes, you can back up to external and internal disks, DVDs,
and shared folders. Although you can recover full volumes from DVD
backups, you cannot recover individual files, folders, or application
data from DVD backups.
Windows Server Backup automatically manages backup disks for you. You
can run backups to multiple disks in rotation simply by adding each
disk as a scheduled backup location. After you configure a disk as a
scheduled backup location, Windows Server Backup automatically manages
the disk storage, ensuring that you no longer need to worry about a disk
running out of space. Windows
Server Backup automatically reuses the space of older backups when
creating newer backups. To help ensure that you can plan for additional
storage needs, Windows Server Backup displays the backups that are available and the current disk usage information.
You can use Windows Server Backup for recovery
in several ways. Rather than having to manually restore files from
multiple backups if the files are stored in incremental backups, you can
recover folders and files by choosing the date on which you backed up
the version of the item or items you want to restore. You can recover
data to the same server hardware or to new server hardware that has no
operating system.
4.1 Using the backup utility
To perform backup and recovery operations, you must use an account
that is a member of the Administrators or Backup Operators group. Only
members of these groups have authority to back up and restore files
regardless of ownership and permissions. File owners and those who have
been given control over files can also back up files, but only the files
that they own or the files that they have permission to access.
The Windows Server backup and recovery tools are available for all
editions of Windows Server 2012. Although you cannot install the
graphical components of these utilities on core installations, you can
use the command line or manage backups remotely from another computer.
You install the Windows
backup and recovery tools using Server Manager. In Server Manager,
select Manage and then tap or click Add Roles And Features. This starts
the Add Roles And Features Wizard. After you select the server where
these tools should be installed continue through the wizard pages until
you get to the Select Features page. On this page, select Windows Server
Backup. Tap or click Next, and then tap or click Install.
When the wizard finishes installing the selected backup and recovery
tools, tap or click Close. From now on, Windows Server Backup will be
available as an option on the Tools menu in Server Manager.
The first time you use Windows Server Backup, you’ll see a warning
that no backup has been configured for the computer, as shown in Figure 2.
You clear this warning by creating a backup using the Back Up Once
feature or by scheduling backups to run automatically using the Backup
Schedule feature.
When you use Windows
Server Backup, the first backup of a server is always a full backup.
This is because the full backup process clears the archive bits on files
so that Windows Server Backup can track which files are updated
subsequently. Whether Windows Server Backup performs subsequent full or
incremental backups depends on the default performance
settings that you configure. When the Local Backup node is selected,
you can configure the default performance settings by tapping or
clicking Configure Performance Settings in the actions pane or on the
Action menu, you can do one of the following and then tap or click OK:
-
Select Normal Backup Performance to perform full backups of all attached drives.
-
Select Faster Backup Performance to perform incremental backups of all attached drives.
-
Select Custom and then, from the option lists provided, select
whether to perform full or incremental backups for individual attached
drives.
After you configure the default performance settings, you can start a
full or copy backup by selecting Backup Once on the Action menu or in
the actions pane. You can configure a backup schedule by tapping or
clicking Backup Schedule on the Action menu or in the actions pane.
These options are available only when the Local Backup node is selected.
Windows Backup has several improvements
for Windows Server 2012. Previously, you could not back up volumes
larger than 2 terabytes (TBs) and volumes had to have 512-byte sectors.
Now you can back up volumes larger than 2 TBs and volumes can use sector
sizes other than 512 bytes. Previously, when you backed up virtual
machines as part of a volume backup, the virtual machines could not be
backed up or restored separately. Now you can select individual virtual
machines to include in a backup and restore individual virtual machines
from a recovery point. Additionally, when you are backing
up a volume, you can specify a deletion policy to determine whether
backups should be deleted after a certain number of backups have elapsed
or whether they should be deleted only when space is needed for
additional backups.
As part of your planning for each server you plan to back up, you
should consider which volumes you want to back up and whether backups
will include system-state recovery data, application data, or both. As
part of the backup process, you also need to specify a storage location
for backups. Keep the following in mind when you are choosing storage
locations:
-
When you use an internal hard disk for storing backups, you are
limited in how you can recover your system. You can recover the data
from a volume, but you cannot rebuild the entire disk structure.
-
When you use an external hard disk for storing backups, the disk will
be dedicated for storing your backups and will not be visible in File
Explorer. Choosing this option will format the selected disk or disks,
removing any existing data.
-
When you use a remote shared folder for storing backups, your backup
will be overwritten each time you create a new backup. Do not choose
this option if you want to store multiple backups for each server.
-
When you use removable media or DVDs for storing backups, you can recover only entire volumes, not applications or individual files. The media you use must be at least 1 gigabyte (GB) in size.
When you create or schedule backups, you need to specify the volumes
that you want to include, and this will affect the ways you can recover
your servers and your data. Back up just critical volumes if you want to
be able to recover only the operating system. Back up just individual
volumes if you want to be able to recover only files, applications, or
data from those volumes.
Back up all volumes with application
data if you want to be able to recover a server fully, along with its
system state and application data. Because you are backing
up all files, the system state, and application data, you should be
able to fully restore your server using only the Windows backup tools.
Back up all volumes without application data if you want to be able
to restore a server and its applications separately. With this
technique, you back up the server using the Windows tools and then back
up applications using third-party tools or tools built into the
applications. You can recover a server fully using the Windows backup
utilities and then use a third-party utility to restore backups of
application data.
