Best practices for local copy backups

Pre-flight checklist

  1. We recommend creating a separate backup set for local copy backups that mimics your offsite backup set. The reason for this is proper segregation and better error reporting if things go wrong.
  2. Your local backup location should have plenty of free space and be assigning the same drive letter/mount point each time the backup runs.
  3. If the local copy destination is a network share, then see our best practices guides for network shares, specifically you should create a pre-command that mounts the share before the backup runs.

Process for creating local copy backup

  1. Create your offsite backup set first
  2. Once this has been created, go into settings
  3. Add a new backup set of the same type as the offsite set, labeling the set something descriptive that includes the machine name and type of data.
  4. Create the set using best practices for the particular backup set type
  5. OK through the wizard and return to the settings screen
  6. Go into the “Local Copy” settings and make the following suggested changes
  7. The key settings are:
    1. Enable copy to local hard disk -> enter the correct onsite location here. Network shares that require authentication need to be mounted with a pre-command, see our best practices guide on how to setup a pre-command to mount the network share.
    2. Skip backing up to the offsite server -> enable this to make this set onsite-only (offsite replication is already being done in the other backup set)
  8. Check the retention policy and adjust accordingly
  9. Setup any additional local copy sets
  10. OK and save your settings
  11. Monitor the backup reports as per usual