Backup Now

ZMC Backup Activation Tab

A backup set must be bound to a schedule plan and activated for its scheduled backups to execute. Backup sets must be activated individually. The Activation of BackupSet can be done from BackupSet page and Backup Now tab. The Backup Now page also includes an option for immediate execution of the backup set. 

Activate Backup lets you select backup sets to put in production (in other words, begin executing the backups as scheduled). You can also Deactivate an already activated backup set. When a backup set is deactivated, ZMC does not execute backup runs associated with that backup set. You can also trigger an Immediate Backup to be executed at any time. When an Immediate Backup is started, you can observe the progress of the backup run in the Monitor page.  

Before activating the BackupSet, make sure that the backup schedule is configured. The backup device will be bound during the creation of the BackupSet and configured in the Backup Where page. The clients/applications are configured in the Sources page and selected on Backup What page for the backup set. 

You can view the status of each backup set. The power icon under the Actions column in the above shows the state of activation. A green "power" icon indicates the backup set has a schedule configured and installed using the "cron" program. Red icons indicate the backup set has a schedule, but the schedule has not been activated. Grey icon indicates the backup set is not linked to a Schedule Plan. Activation can also be done in source level.  

Activating a backup set causes ZMC to create a crontab entry for the amandabackup user corresponding to the backup set schedule specified in the Backup When page. Some complex ZMC schedules will require multiple crontab entries. ZMC will create and manage these crontab entries automatically when the backup set is activated using the "Activate" button.  

All crontab entries added by ZMC have the option argument --zmcdev. These ZMC-created crontab entries are automatically regenerated by ZMC. To manually edit and alter these crontab entries, first, remove the argument --zmcdev. Since ZMC ignores crontab entries lacking --zmcdev, ZMC will not replace the manually edited entry, and ZMC will show the backup set as inactive.   

You can also abort the backup run for a backup set using the Abort button in Monitor page. Aborting a backup stops the backup job and cleans up all the backup processes on the server. 

Above image shows the confirmation window for the abort operation.