Zmanda Windows Client (or ZWC) backs up data from Microsoft Windows clients to an Amanda backup server. It is compatible with the following operating system versions:
Windows clients must open inbound TCP ports 10080 and 10081, and outbound TCP ports 700:800.
Important Note: During installation, an amandabackup user account is created on the Zmanda Windows Client using local rules (i.e., Domain Controller/Domain/Standalone Workstation) for password creation. These OS users run backup and restore processes. When you change the account passwords eventually, be careful to ensure that security policies (such as strong passwords, password expiration) are followed. If an amandabackup user password expires, the Zmanda Windows Client service will fail to start, returning a Login Failure message.
Because the Zmanda Windows Client is packaged as an .msi file, you can use the Windows Installer tool (msiexec.exe) in conjunction with other enterprise deployment and distribution tools (either from Microsoft or other vendors) to perform multiple, unattended installations in a large-scale environment. Enterprise installation tools are described in more detail here.
The msiexec command line to perform an unattended installation of the Zmanda Windows Client is:
The example above causes the Windows Installer to display a status bar and log any installation messages to C:\ZWCInst.log. To run the Installer without the status bar, use the /quiet option. You can also specify different paths for the ZWCInstaller.msi and log file if desired.
On Windows Vista, the ZWCService service must be manually added to the "Exceptions" list for the Windows Firewall. If the Windows Firewall is ON, the Zmanda Management Console will be unable to communicate with the with Zmand Windows Client service unless you follow these steps after installing the client:
If the installation failed for some reason, the ZWC installer rolls back the installation to the last working configuration.
The installation program logs messages to the following locations:
Installation can fail for a variety of reasons. For example, the user set a Password not conforming to Windows requirements, or running the installation program without the necessarily permissions. The log messages will explain what went wrong.
Depending on the size of backup sets and the number of backup runs scheduled for your organization, the Zmanda Windows Client can consume a lot (>1G) of disk space. The files that tend to grow are listed below:
If you find that the ZWC installation is consuming too much disk space while processing backup sets, you can move location of these files. There are two methods of doing this:
The Zmanda Management Console (ZMC) allows Disk List Entries with different Host Types to be included in the same Backup Set. Disk List Entries for Windows Clients resemble entries for other host types (Linux, Solaris, etc.).
The only way in which Windows clients are treated differently is this: When Windows directory paths are specified by back slashes, ZMC converts them to forward slashes. For example, ZMC converts the path C:\abc to C:/abc. On the Restore What page, all paths are displayed with forward slashes.
The Zmanda Management Console can back up mapped drives on a Windows client provided the drives have been mapped from the 'amandabackup' account on the Windows machine. This constraint is because XP, Vista, Windows 2003 server drive letters are not global; different users can map different directories on different servers to the same drive letter. For further information, see the article "Backing up network mapped drives on Windows clients" on Zmanda's Knowledgebase.
If you have purchased and installed the relevant Zmanda licenses, Amanda Enterprise can perform intelligent backups of selected Windows applications such as Exchange and Oracle. These backups use Microsofts VSS (Volume Shadow Service) to capture a consistent copy of the database(s) in question.
Refer to the Zmanda Application Modules User Guide for further details.
If only one of the hardlinked files is present in the backup set, then the information about its other hardlink files will not be backed up. Also at restore time, if only one hardlink file is selected for restore, then its other hardlink file will not be restored. Please see this Zmanda Knowledgebase article for details.
The Restore procedure for a Windows client similar to the procedure for other clients. Note that you cannot restore a Windows backup to a Linux/Unix destination host.
Choose Windows instead of Linux/Unix.
The Destination Directory specifies the client directory on which ZMC will restore the files (the default is to restore to the original location). If a Restore fails while restoring to Zmanda Windows Client and displays the following error, please refer to the Debug log files located in the Zmanda Windows Client Installation folder for details:
"ERROR: Client Reported Error while Restoring Error restoring the selected files"
Note: Restoring C:\Windows directly is not recommended because the system files may be open. Use a Windows System State backup image (see the next section) to restore files to C:\Windows.
Windows System State refers to a collection of several key operating system elements and their files. Backing up the Windows System State is crucial for a successful disaster recovery strategy. Zmanda Windows Client can back up the Windows System State of Windows 2003 Server (with or without AD), Windows XP, and Vista clients. Windows System State is always a full backup (level 0).
The system state can be restored to the original location or a different location. Partial restoration of Windows System State can be done only to a different directory location. Windows System State files require special handling to back up because they are always locked.
Depending on the type of Windows system, Zmanda Windows Client software backs up the following System State information in comprehensive and coherent fashion:
Workstation in this context means any Windows XP machine or any Windows Vista or Windows 2003 server machine which does not have Active Directory (AD).
A Domain Controller (or DC) is any Windows 2003 machine with Active Directory installed. DC backups include all of the state information listed above for Workstations, plus the Active Directory database, log files, and Group Policy Objects (GPOs).
To back up the Windows System State (which is always a full backup), choose Microsoft Windows System State as the type in the Backup What page of the Zmanda Management Console. Compression of system state can be enabled by clicking the check box on the right panel.
To restore Windows system state, specify the Initial Directory as SystemState in the Restore What page of ZMC.
Please note the following requirements and cautions regarding System State restores through the Zmanda Windows Client:
During the installation process, the amandabackup user is created and a password is set. To change the password, shut down the Zmanda Windows Client service, then use the Windows Control Panel utility to edit the amandabackup user account. Use the same procedure as for any other Windows-based password protected service. Restart the Zmanda Windows Client service when you are done. Note that the service must restart without any errors for the changed password to take effect.
The Zmanda Windows Client configuration utility (ZWCConfig) can be used to change Windows client logging levels, adding/removing Amanda servers and to create windows templates. A template is a list of directories on the Windows client that are to be backed up as group, offering the same functionality that Disk List Entries provide on the Amanda server.
Log on to the workstation as the Administrator and start ZWCConfig utility by clicking Start->Programs->Zmanda Client for Windows->ZWCConfig. To create a template, click the Template tab. Specify a template name and the list of files and folders to be included in the template. The following screen shows the creation of mydocs template that backs up the adminstrator's documents folder.
The Zmanda Windows Client templates can be added to Amanda client configuration using Zmanda Management Console. Navigate to Backup Where and choose Windows Template as the object to backup to display the following:
Host Name is the name of the Window system being backed up, which can be either an IP address or a fully qualified domain name. Template specifies the path to the template file on that host. See the ZMC's Backup What help for more detailed information about the other fields and ZMC operation.
Changing ZWC configuration parameters requires administrator to restart Zmanda Windows Client service. Zmanda Windows client service can be restarted from the Windows services user interface (Administrative Tools > Services). An example services screen is shown below.
You may have a need to perform automated operations before and after a backup run, such as deleting temporary files, starting or shutting down services, or other such operations that can be performed from a Windows script or batch file. By editing the template file described in the previous section, you can specify such scripts to run automatically either before or after a backup run for a given backup set.
Simply add a <PRE_BACKUP_SCRIPT> or <POST_BACKUP_SCRIPT> tag to the template.txt file for a given backup set. The tag's content is the path to script. For example:
<PRE_BACKUP_SCRIPT>C:\Program Files\Zmanda\Zmanda Internet Backup\bin\preScript.exe</PRE_BACKUP_SCRIPT> <POST_BACKUP_SCRIPT>C:\Program Files\Zmanda\Zmanda Internet Backup\bin\postScript.exe</POST_BACKUP_SCRIPT>
If the prebackup script fails, the backup returns ZWC_ENG_ERR_PRE_SCRIPT (error code 278).
If the postbackup script fails, error will be logged and backup status will be success.
If you have created backup images using Amanda Enterprise edition Windows Client 2.6.1 or older, the older version of the client is required to recover the files to a Windows machine. Contact the Zmanda Support team for assistance. Alternatively, you can use the current version of Amanda Enterprise to recover the files to the backup server and then move them manually to the client.
The zwc-support utility collects system log files, log files related to ZWC and system related information. The utility then archives these log files into a single compressed file. This compressed file can be then sent to the Zmanda Support team for analysis.
The Zmanda Windows Client support utility zwc-support.bat is included with the Zmanda Windows Client. To start the script, click Start->Programs->Zmanda Client for Windows->zwc-support
The following types of log files are gathered by zwc-support:
After the utility is run, an output file with the name zwc-logs-datetimestamp.cab is created in the Zmanda installation directory.