Veritas™ System Recovery 21 User's Guide

How Offsite Copy works

Backing up your data to a secondary hard disk is a critical first step to protecting your information assets. But to make certain your data is safe, use Offsite Copy. You enable and configure Offsite Copy when you define a new drive-based backup job. Or you can edit an existing backup job to enable Offsite Copy.

Regardless of the method you use, storing copies of your recovery points at a remote location provides a crucial level of redundancy if your office becomes inaccessible. Offsite Copy can double your data protection by ensuring that you have a remote copy.

When you enable Offsite Copy, you specify up to two offsite copy destinations. After the backup job finishes creating recovery points, Offsite Copy verifies that at least one of the offsite copy destinations is available. Offsite Copy then begins copying the new recovery points to the offsite copy destination.

The most recent recovery points are copied first, followed by the next newest recovery points. If you have set up two offsite copy destinations, Offsite Copy copies recovery points to the destination that was added first. If an offsite copy destination is unavailable, Offsite Copy tries to copy recovery points to the second destination, if it is available. If neither destination is available, then Offsite Copy copies the recovery points the next time an offsite copy destination becomes available.

For example, suppose you have configured a backup job to run at 6:00 P.M. and configured an external drive as an offsite copy destination. However, when you leave the office at 5:30 P.M., you take the drive with you for safekeeping. When the backup job completes at 6:20 P.M., Veritas System Recovery detects that the offsite copy destination drive is not available and the copy process is aborted. The following morning, you plug the drive back in to the computer. Veritas System Recovery detects the presence of the offsite copy destination drive and automatically begins copying your recovery points.

Offsite Copy is designed to use very few system resources so that the copying process is done in the background. This feature lets you continue to work at your computer with little or no effect on system resources.

If an offsite copy destination runs out of disk space, Offsite Copy identifies the oldest recovery points and removes them to accommodate the most current recovery points. Offsite Copy then copies the current recovery points to the offsite copy destination.

See Defining a drive-based backup.

See Editing backup settings.

You can use an external drive as your offsite copy destination. This method lets you take a copy of your data with you when you leave the office. By using two external hard disks, you can be certain that you have a recent copy of your data both on site and off site.

For example, suppose on a Monday morning you define a new backup job of your system drive. You choose a recovery point set as your backup job type. You set up an external drive (A) as the first offsite copy destination, and another external drive (B) as the second offsite copy destination. You schedule the backup job to run every midnight except on the weekends. You also enable recovery point encryption to protect the data from unauthorized access.

Before you leave the office on Monday evening, you plug in drive A and take drive B home with you.

On Tuesday morning, you find that Monday's base recovery point has been successfully copied to drive A. At the end of the day, you unplug drive A and take it home for safekeeping.

On Wednesday morning, you bring drive B to the office. You plug in drive B and Veritas System Recovery detects that drive B is an offsite copy destination. Veritas System Recovery then automatically begins copying Monday night's base recovery point and Tuesday night's incremental recovery point. At the end of the day Wednesday, you take drive B home and place it in a safe place with drive A.

You now have multiple copies of recovery points stored at two separate, physical locations; your original recovery points stored on your backup destinations at the office, and copies of those same recovery points stored on your offsite copy destination drives. Your offsite copy destination drives are stored in a safe place at your home.

The next morning, Thursday, you take drive A to the office and plug it in. Tuesday and Wednesday night's recovery points are then automatically copied to drive A.

See Removing or changing the unique name for an external drive.

Each time you plug in either drive A or B, the latest recovery points are added to the drive. This method gives you multiple points in time for recovering your computer in the event that the original backup destination drives fail or become unrecoverable.

Using external drives as your offsite copy destination ensures that you have a copy of your backup data stored at two separate, physical locations.

You can specify a local area network server as an offsite copy destination. You must be able to access the server that you plan to use. You must either map a local drive to the server, or provide a valid UNC path.

For example, suppose that you set up a local external drive as your first offsite copy destination. Then you identify a server that is located at a second physical location from your own office. You add the remote server as a second offsite copy destination. As backups occur, recovery points are copied first to the external hard drive, and then to the remote server.

If the remote server becomes unavailable for a period of time, Offsite Copy copies all recovery points that were created since the last connection. If there is no room to hold all of the recovery points that are available, Offsite Copy removes the oldest recovery points from the network server. In turn, it makes room for the newest recovery points.

Using an FTP server as your offsite copy destination is similar to using a network path. You must provide a valid FTP path to the FTP server.

You must also provide the correct FTP connection information to Veritas System Recovery for this method to work correctly. When Offsite Copy is configured correctly, it copies recovery points to the directory that you specified on the FTP server. If the server becomes unavailable for a period of time, Offsite Copy copies all recovery points that were created since the last connection. If there is no room to hold all of the recovery points that are available, Offsite Copy removes the oldest recovery points or recovery point sets from the FTP server. In turn, it makes room for the newest recovery points.

See Configuring default FTP settings for use with Offsite Copy.