Request: Definitive Backup & Restore Tools and Guide


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56 minutes ago, trurl said:

In addition to those docker templates, you need appdata to get your dockers going again as they were. I don't use VMs seriously enough to know the details for backing th

Here is all the evidence I need to prove my point. Where did you get the information about app data? What if you did want to back up your VMs because you started to use them seriously?

 

This information should be officially provided by line tech. That's the minimum I'm requesting, I'm shocked that no one else sees this or cares.

 

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12 minutes ago, ethanpil said:

I'm shocked that no one else sees this or cares.

The Unraid power users that care already back up the things that they feel the need to. All the info is either easily searchable, or available for the asking if you are motivated enough to ask.

 

I get that you want Limetech as a company to step in, but @jonp already made their current position clear when you originally asked in this thread.

 

VM's are tricky if you insist on backups while they are running, but cold backups are simple to handle either with the existing plugin or manually. Personally I backup my VM's exactly like I do any other machine on my network, with a client that runs inside the VM (I use UrBackup that's running as a container on unraid) or your client of choice.

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Theres a reason companies like veeam, cohesity, rubrik, and others have huge market valuations - it's simply because backing up everything online and with one tool is a hugely complicated task.

 

The problem here isnt that nobody wants this. It's that most of those that do also understand that the ask isnt a reasonable one, and have implemented their own backup strategies already with that understanding in mind imo.

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This has already been answered previously a couple of times, with opinions from both myself, limetech, and others as to what the complexities of this are and why. I dont know if they're just being missed, misunderstood, or what's going on there, but I'd have a read back through them.

 

What you're asking for is not simple by any stretch, and multiple multi-billion dollar corporations have been founded to solve the problem surrounding this type of request - again, imo, it's just not reasonable to ask a small team to create such in addition to their main product.

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41 minutes ago, ethanpil said:

 

It's unreasonable to ask for official documentation on how to fully backup and restore my configuration?

Yes.

 

The most direct reason being that Unraid allows you to use any combination of hardware that you wish, and it's up to you to configure and customize that hardware to meet your needs. There is no possible way to back up Unraid such that it will always restore to an unknown set of hardware with all containers and VM's functioning identically.

 

What you are asking would only be possible if Unraid controlled every piece of the machine, allowing you to use only a specific tested combination of hardware.

 

Now, you say, I don't care about different hardware, I just want to be able to restore back to my own hardware exactly as I backed up. That scenario is covered already, and has been for years. File level copies of all drives taken with the services stopped is all that is necessary, it's always been that way.

 

Making valid backups with services still running ranges from tricky to impossible, as has been covered multiple times in this thread and elsewhere.

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As a new user, there are explanations here on what needs to be backed up and where it resides I had not seen before but I have been researching this for days.  On VM backup Spaceinvader's videos are years old but it seems he was grabbing xml, OVFM RAM, and vdisks with scripts.  From this thread I gather we can shut off VM and it just be XML and vdisk thats required as a backup or alternatively XML and windows backup iso made from within VM but for the later would we then have to reinstall windows and then restore backup?  I ask rhetorically because for us new and novice users this level of basic information is needed.

 

I do hope this very basic outline is something I might find in documentation somewhere either now or in the future.  Until then this thread is best thing I have found.

 

Best, C

 

 

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On 3/22/2021 at 3:07 PM, jonp said:

Hi there

Totally understand your request and why you would want a fully documented backup solution. There are plenty of different tools out there to utilize for backups. There have been a number of different guides written from different individuals on how to do this.  We even wrote a blog post recently detailing one (https://unraid.net/blog/unraid-server-to-server-backups-with-rsync-and-wireguard).

 

The reality is that backup is a business in and of itself. There are plethora of different providers out there that create various software solutions that work with various platforms such as Unraid. If we ever do create a first-party solution for backups for unraid we will obviously document it but until then we do rely on the community and other backup software solution providers to provide guidance.  That being said, we may end up creating a guide under our wiki in the future, but no ETA on when that will happen just yet.

@jonp Question, can you just tell me the things I need to backup for a windows VM and where they reside?

I have no issue bringing down the VM to do this.

I see in some of these scripts a backup of xml, some ram files (?), and then of course the Vdisk.

How would I manually go about doing a backup and then restoring?   I mean no tool just copying files myself.  

 

Thanks for anytime you can spare this new but enthused user?

 

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