Within Foldr Settings > Backup & Restore, the Foldr administrator can backup the appliance settings to an encrypted file. The entire appliance configuration, licence keys, LDAP Settings, shares, permissions etc will be included in the backup. The backup files may be stored on the appliance itself or copied to a remote SMB share. Appliance configuration backups may be scheduled if required.
This feature could be useful to restore a working configuration either to the existing system or another Foldr appliance. They may be used to speed up the recovery in the event of a failure or when migrating the Foldr appliance from one hypervisor platform to another.
Protecting the whole Foldr appliance
It is always recommended to include Foldr in your regular backup routine using the third-party solution of your choice (Veeam B&R, Nakivo B&R, Acronis, Backup Exec etc) – Foldr’s own settings backup routine should be considered complementary to a whole system backup.
Protecting the appliance during updates
Where Foldr is deployed as a virtual machine, Hypervisor level snapshots should be employed before the system is updated from the online update server and snapshots should be removed once the update has completed.
Creating a Backup
To create a standalone backup, simply enter a 16 character key (password), or use the text link to generate a random key and click CREATE BACKUP. Note that the password must be exactly 16 characters in length as this is the encryption key that will be used to decrypt and restore the backup later.
The backup file will be created and stored upon the appliance itself. The backup size and creation date will be shown as below:
Scheduled / Automatic Backups
The appliance can schedule backups to be taken automatically at a time of your choosing. Within the Schedule tab, you can select the number of backups to store locally on the appliance and the time that the backup should be run, either daily, weekly or monthly.
Weekly backups are run every Sunday at the time specified.
Monthly backups are run on the 1st of the month at the time specified.
To create a scheduled backup, select the configuration required and enter a 16 character key / password and finally click Save Changes. The appliance can create a random 16 character key for you by clicking the text link shown in the dialog.
Important – Make a note of the encryption key
It is vital to make a note of the encryption key that is used for both standalone or scheduled backups as it will be required in the event that you need to restore the backup (even to the same system). Note that the key will not be displayed again later.
If you fail to make a note of the key, the backups will not be usable
Writing backups to a remote SMB share
When standalone or scheduled backups are run, the backup file is always firstly created locally on the appliance but it can also be copied to a remote SMB share (Windows file server etc). To enable this functionality, navigate to the Remote Storage tab and enter the SMB path to the share and select a suitable service account that has write permission to the share.
Backing up Search Data
If the Foldr server being backed up has the search indexing service enabled, the search data can be included in a backed up by enabling the ‘Include search data‘ toggle in the Backup or Schedule tabs as required.
Important – If a large amount of data has been indexed the backup files can be many hundred MBs in size (or more). The administrator should consider limiting the number of backups stored locally on the appliance if using scheduled backups to limit the possibility of filling the virtual disk.
Importing a Backup
To import a backup file, navigate to Foldr Settings >> Backup & Restore >> Backups tab, drag and drop the backup file (.fbk) into the window. When the area goes green you can release the file to upload it to the appliance.
Restoring a Backup
To Restore a backup, mouse over the selected backup file from the list available and select the far left in-line button.
Agree to the prompt – click YES, RESTORE
Provide the backup encryption key and click OK
The backup will be restored, the appliance configuration database will be updated. The Foldr server should now be rebooted, either by using the top right menu in Foldr Settings or the Foldr console.
Note that if you are restoring a backup containing search data to a new Foldr appliance, you must navigate into the Search tab in Foldr Settings and manually start the service before you will see the Search cores and URIs in the admin UI.