• DO IT Solutions
    0
    I have been happy with Cloudberry Labs managed backup software for some time.

    However, I have never been able to set an age range for files to backup. I have had to use another program to copy the files I need (script) to another location and then get Cloudberry to backup from there (work-around).
    I know that I can backup all files older than X days old.
    But I instead need to backup files between X and X days old.
    I would even be ok with backing up files newer than X days old.

    Reason:
    Each weekend, I need cloudberry to only take the latest nightly backup file from a directory.
    The directory has 7 days worth of retained backups at all times.
    Currently cloudberry backs up all 7 files each week (meaning we have 1 backup per day on the amazon cloud storage and it is filling up. I need 1 per week only so I can retain them for months without using too much space).

    Is there another way I can do this? Some way of hiding older files from Cloudberry perhaps, or is there a feature for this that I am missing?

    Thank you,
    Michael A.
  • David Gugick
    118
    There are options in the Backup wizard to only back up files modified in the last X days (labeled as Backup Files Modified (days ago) in the Managed Backup web console). If you set that option to 1, then CloudBerry will only back up files changed in the last day; leaving those backups from earlier in the week alone. But this does mean you can only run the backup once a week. Is that what you're doing and would this solution work for you?
  • DO IT Solutions
    0
    There are options in the Backup wizard to only back up files modified in the last X days

    Hello David,
    You may be mistaken (Although I kind of hope you are right and I am missing something).

    There is an option called:
    "Backup files modified -_- days ago"
    With this description:
    "Files will be backed up only if they have been modified more than specified days ago"
    And indeed that is what it does. If I put "1" days for that setting, it ignores files less than 1 day old and only backs up files older than that.
    I need files less than 1 days old to be backed up only, and to ignore files older than that.

    I also can see this option:
    "Backup files modified since: -_date_-"
    Now, if I could enter a number of days here, that would be perfect. But alas, it only lets me enter a date. This means that this setting is not useful for automated backups, I would have to manually set this day to yesterday and then run the backup. The date set is unchanging over time.

    Weird idea for a solution:
    Is there some way for Windows to hide certain files within a folder?
    I have looked on google for ways to create a "search folder" like in Outlook so that I can enter criteria and it shows the results. If I could point cloudberrylab managed backup to such a folder set to only show results modified within the last day this would be a work-around that works.
    Do you have a weird but functional work around perhaps like that in mind that might work?
  • DO IT Solutions
    0
    Another quirky idea:
    There is an option not to backup hidden files.
    I could create a script that makes any file older than 1 day hidden in windows, and then tick the option in managed backup to ignore hidden files and run this script as a pre-backup script.
    Actually, this is the best work-around I have found so far.
    Any better ideas?
  • David Gugick
    118
    Let me verify and I'll reply shortly.
  • David Gugick
    118
    You are correct. I made a mistake on that option. I've asked the team to recommend some solutions. In the meantime:

    This is how you might do it instead:
    - Ignore the advanced filter backup options.
    - On the Retention settings:
    - Select Specify custom retention settings
    - Check Delete versions older than
    - Set the retention to what you want - say 1 Day
    - Do not check Always keep the last version
    - Leave other options unselected

    If you run backups every night and have 7 in a folder, these options would cause CloudBerry to only back up the files modified in the last day because we understand there is no reason to back up a file older and then delete it immediately. However, it does mean any time you run the backup any backup files older than one day will be removed from backup storage - and that may not be something you want. Could you elaborate on your retention settings?

    The other thing you can do is copy backup files from the backup folder CloudBerry is using to another folder and delete anything from the folder. Run this as a script before the CloudBerry backup that runs on Sunday. So you run backups Mon-Sat to folder E:\Backup @ 3am. Then on Sunday, before 3am backup is kicked off, all backups are copied to E:\Backup-LongTerm and all files are deleted from E:\Backup. Then the backup runs, there is only a single file in the backup folder, and CloudBerry copies it to the cloud. You can then set retention to remove backup files that have been deleted locally so the older backups in the cloud are removed.

    The other thing you can do as you stated is to flag the backup files as System or Hidden using a script that runs ATTRIB or similar before the backup. But ATTRIB does not have date filters as far as I'm aware so you may have to resort to using PowerShell or a 3rd party utility. But the problem here is the backup files will not be removed unless you set retention settings to remove them after a certain period and you do not check the option to keep the last version.

    I'll let you know if the team provides other possible solutions.
  • DO IT Solutions
    0
    Thank you David for your detailed reply.

    Just to clarify, we have the CloudBerry retention settings set to keep data for 60 days.
    We can't change this as we want backed up data for 8 weeks on the cloud (or 2 months).

    We have a software program which backs itself up each night and has the past 7 days retained in it's backup folder. We are trying to get Cloudberry to run once per week (Sunday) to get the previous night's backup (Saturday) only each week and keep it for 2 months. We need to do it this way as each nightly backup is over 100GB. We want to keep about 8 of these 100GB backups in cloud storage (8 weeks retention of a single weekly backup). Currently, it is taking all 7 of the nightly backups each week which means it is storing about 800GBs/week (about 7TB for the 8 week cloud retention period). Finding a good solution will mean the 8 single weekly backups will only take 800GB all up at any time on the cloud instead of 7TB (large cost difference).

    We want to avoid scripting the single latest weekly backup to copy to another location for reasons I won't go into, but that would be a work-around for most in this situation.

    I think we will script the hidden or system attribute via a batch file which searches for files older than 1 day and applies the attribute ("For files" command first, then apply attributes to results). This will not require any data copying and allow Cloudberry to backup directly from that folder.

    If your dev team are interested in adding a new feature, having the number of days as an option in the backup plan settings would be great (in addition to the date selector which is currently there and possibly used by many).
    This forum has helped me think of a work-around for now until a feature is added (if it does).

    Thanks again for your time.
  • scfigg
    0
    Any other solution to this? Just downloaded the trial, and want to back up like 30TB worth of files to B2, but this blows my mind that it's not an option yet. I too, thought that the modified X days ago would only backup files modified within the last X days - but that's not accurate, I guess. It's backing up a ton of data I don't want. I only want it to backup data modified within the last day, but don't want it deleting everything either, so the retention policy shouldn't have to be changed for this weird design.
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