Using premium backup and recovery services : Initial backups
 
Initial backups
About initial backups
The DS‑Client service is designed to perform automated backups to an off-site location. The DS‑Client service backs up only incremental changes after the first backup. This requires an adequate communication link between DS‑Client and DS‑System that will allow backup of any modified data in the given time frame.
The first, full baseline backup often requires transferring a large amount of data. If the communication link between the DS‑Client and the DS‑System cannot handle this large transfer in a reasonable amount of time (for example, a few days), you can consider using the feature Initial Backup.
Two tools are available to help you to determine the size of your baseline backup and whether Initial Backup will be a more efficient method.
• You can use the LAN Storage Discovery Tool to analyze your LAN. See “About the LAN storage Discovery Tool”.
• You can use Statistical backup sets to calculate the amount of data to transmit. Divide this number by your communications bandwidth to estimate how long the first backup will take. See “Statistical backup sets”.
The Initial Backup feature allows you to back up to local buffer location(s) that are either directly connected to DS-Client or visible on the LAN and then to ship that media (for example, disks) to your service provider. Your service provider will import the Initial Backup data from a media that is either attached to DS‑System or connected via a LAN connection. Once the Initial Backup data is imported into DS-System, you can perform subsequent scheduled and on-demand backups.
To use the initial backup service
1. Ensure that your DS-Client is already registered with DS-System.
2. See “Configuring the initial backup path”.
3. See “Creating an initial backup set”.
4. Perform a Backup of all Initial backup sets to the Initial Backup buffer. See “Performing an on-demand backup”.
5. Monitor the status of Initial backup sets. See “Monitoring the status of an initial backup set”.
6. Ship the Initial Backup buffer media to your service provider. See “Sending initial backup data to DS-System”.
More information can be found in the Knowledge Base article in “Best Practices: Initial Backup”.