Backup Now

ZMC Backup Activation Page

A backup set must be activated for its automatically-scheduled backups to execute. Backup sets must be activated individually. The Backup Activate page also includes an option for the 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 run, you can observe the progress of the backup run on the Monitor page.

Before a backup set is activated, make sure the backup schedules are configured in the Backup When page, the backup device is configured in the Backup Where page and clients/applications are configured in the Backup What page for the backup set.

You view the status of each backup set. The Active 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. A grey icon indicates the backup set cannot be activated. Backup sets lacking device bindings or having other problems cannot be activated.

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 Activate/Deactivate/Edit backup sets after selecting multiple backup sets. You can also abort the backup run for a backup set using the Abort button.  Aborting a backup stops the backup job and cleans up all the backup processes on the server.

The above image shows the confirmation window for the abort operation.