Backup Copy job is a feature of Nakivo Backup and Replication that allows the administrators to make a copy of existing backups to different backup repositories.
Having more than one copy of your business-critical backups is extremely important for ensuring that your data can be recovered in case of a disaster.
With Backup Copy job you can maintain a mirrored copy of your primary backup from one repository to another or just having a copy of most important backups to save storage space.
If the primary backup gets corrupted or the main storage fails, you can still recover VMs, Microsoft Exchange objects, Microsoft Active Directory objects, and files from the backup copies. The process is completely managed by Nakivo without involving the source ESXi hosts.
Using Backup Copy feature you can set different retention policies for your primary VM backups and their copies in a different backup repository. This solution allows to keep a weekly, monthly and yearly copies of VM backups in the secondary backup repository without affecting the primary storage.
Configure a local Backup Copy job
Make sure you have a secondary backup repository to store copies of main backups in Repositories section.
From the Dashboard click Create menu and select Backup copy job.
With Backup Copy job you can copy VM backups from multiple backup repositories into a single backup repository or copy one backup to multiple backup repositories. Select from the list the backup to copy and click Next.
In Backup repository field, select the repository to use. It should be different from main backup repository.
When the repository has been selected, click Next to continue.
Specify a schedule to run the Backup Copy Job and click Next. You can specify a dedicated schedule for Backup Copy jobs regardless the main backup schedule.
Type the Job name and specify the Recovery points retention. Click Finish to create the job.
To start the job immediately, right click the Backup Copy configured and select Run Job.
Click Run to confirm.
The job is being executed copying the file to the specified repository.
When the job completes, the Job Info area reports the backup status and alarms in case something goes wrong.
Configure an offsite Copy Backup
To follow the 321 backup rule, in addition to backups stored locally you can configure an offsite copy of most critical backups to fulfill also the DR requirements.
The offsite backup repositories can be placed anywhere and Nakivo offer a feature to save your backups in a reliable and affordable cloud storage like Amazon.
A detailed procedure to configure a Backup Copy job to Amazon can be found in this article.
Restore
From the Backup Copy you can easily recover VMs, Microsoft Exchange objects, Microsoft Active Directory objects, and files. In the Dashboard, select VMs from backup option from the Recover menu.
Select the VM to recover from the Backup Copy and click Next.
Specify the Container (cluster or ESXi host) to use, the Datastore to save the recovered VM and the used Network. Click Next to continue.
Type a Job name and click Finish.
Right click the just created task and select Run Job.
Click Run to confirm.
The VM recover is being performed to the selected datastore.
When the process completes successfully, you can check the Job info in the right side of the screen.
From the vCenter Server the recovered VM is up and running.
Using the Backup Copy jobs feature allows you to protect your critical-backups in case of a disaster in the production environment or primary backups.
