Forest Recovery: Create and run backup plans

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Summary

This article describes how to create Backup Plans for Active Directory forest in Cayosoft Guardian.

Backup Plans must be configured in Cayosoft Guardian to protect your Active Directory forest from forest-wide and domain-wide failures. Backup Plans are jobs with a schedule, a list of domain controllers to back up, and connected Backup Locations where backups will be copied to.  

 

Prepare for backup plan creation

Add Managed Domains

To create backup plans at least one domain must be added to Cayosoft Guardian.

To fully protect your forests against forest-wide failures all domains in your Active Directory forests must be added to Cayosoft Guardian. Learn more about how to add a domain.

 

Add Backup Locations

To create a backup plan at least one Backup Location must be configured.  Backup Location is a network file share or Azure file share where the backup files can be created and managed.

Learn more about how to manage backup locations and backup files.

 

Create a backup plan

1. In Cayosoft Guardian Web Portal expand Forest Recovery node
2. Click on the Backup plans node
3. Press Add
4. Select domains that you plan to backup and press Add
5. Adjust schedule if required
6. On the Storage tab, add storage where the backups of domain controllers will be created
7. On the Domain controllers tab review the list of domain controllers

After creation Backup Plan is pre-configured to back up all domain controllers in selected domains.

You might consider removing domain controllers from the Backup Plan to reduce the space required for backup files in the Backup Locations. At least two DCs in each domain should be backed up regularly. Learn more about backup plans management. 

 

Run the backup plan

After creation Backup Plan is pre-configured to be executed according to a schedule. A backup plan can also be launched manually. 

To run a backup plan ahead of schedule open the backup plan and press Run.

After the Run button is pressed an execution history record appears where you can observe execution steps, the current state, and the duration of each step. Each step produces detailed messages during the execution. These messages can be accessed with a click on the execution step. 

The errors and warnings tab in the execution history record allows reviewing important issues related to this job run.

 

View backup creation results

To review older execution history records related to a specific Backup Plan the following steps have to be performed.

1. In Cayosoft Guardian Web Portal expand Forest Recovery node
2. Open Backup plans
3. Select a backup plan and press Properties
4. On the backup plan properties page switch to a Backup History tab
5. Find an execution history record, select and press Properties
6. See execution details on the Execution and the Errors and warnings tabs