User configuration ¶

Overview ¶

An administrator can change user account properties, Protected Item, Storage Vault, Device, and Policy settings via the Server web interface.

A user can change their own Protected Item and Storage Vault settings via the Cloud Backup client application and the web interface.

The descriptions in this section apply to both situations.

Profile ¶

Username ¶

Usernames must be at least six characters long, using only the characters a-z, A-Z, 0-9, underscore (_), period (.), at (@), and hyphen (-).

Usernames are case-sensitive.

Password ¶

Passwords must be at least eight characters long.

The password must be on one line (no CR/LF bytes are permitted).

Any other characters are permitted, including spaces, special characters, symbols, and characters from international alphabets.

Timezone ¶

the Cloud Backup client app resets the user's timezone automatically, to match the user's operating system timezone. An administrator can set the user's timezone to any valid IANA tzdata timezone. The default timezone for new accounts is always Etc/UTC.

The user's local timezone is used to calculate schedule times (e.g. a scheduled backup for "Friday 7 AM" means a different UTC instant depending on the customers' configured timezone).

Email addresses ¶

Cloud Backup Server has some built-in features to send email reports to customers. You can configure any number of email addresses for a user account.

Email addresses can be configured via Cloud Backup Server and via the Cloud Backup client. An administrator can set an account policy to control whether users are allowed to modify their own email addresses.

Custom email reports ¶

The default backup report is an immediate email as soon as any backup job finishes.

You can customize the email reports received by customers.

The following custom reports are available:

Report type	Available in	Schedule	Description
Immediate job notification	>= 18.9.3	Immediately when a job has completed	The report contains the full job log
Summary table	>= 18.9.4	Any schedule	A table of jobs matching your custom search

Reports can be filtered to choose what jobs will be considered for the report. You can filter on a large number of criteria including but not limited to the job's type classification, status, start time, duration, Protected Item, and Storage Vault. For advanced queries, the search system supports boolean logic (AND/OR) and arbitrary-depth clause grouping.

You can send multiple reports for a single email address. This allows you to combine multiple report criteria.

For report templates allowing custom schedules, you can use any schedule supported by the normal backup scheduler. Scheduled times are relative to each customer's configured local timezone.

Recipes ¶

• Send jobs only on failure
  • Report 1
    • Type: "Immediate job notification"
    • Filter: "Status" "not equal" "Success"
• Send reports for different Protected Items to different email addresses
  • Email address 1
    • Report 1
      • Type "Immediate job notification"
      • Filter: "Protected Item ID" "equal" "{one Protected Item}"
  • Email address 2
    • Report 1
      • Type "Immediate job notification"
      • Filter: "Protected Item ID" "equal" "{another Protected Item}"
• Send only a daily summary of jobs
  • Report 1
    • Type: "Summary table"
    • Schedule: Daily at 07:00
    • Filter: "Time since job start" "less or equal" "24 hours"
• Send only a weekly summary of jobs, but, also send immediate notifications on failure
  • Report 1
    • Type: "Immediate job notification"
    • Filter: "Status" "not equal" "Success"
  • Report 2
    • Type: "Summary table"
    • Schedule: Weekly on Friday at 12:00
    • Filter: "Time since job start" "less or equal" "7 days"

Quota ¶

Cloud Backup supports Quota restrictions based on different types of data measurements.

All Protected Items Quota ¶

You can set a limit on the maximum size of all Protected Items in the user's account. When a backup job is performed, the total size of Protected Items is checked against this quota, and the backup job will be aborted if it would exceed quota. If possible, the quota limits are checked before starting the backup, to avoid inconvenient interruptions and wasted bandwidth.

Device Limit ¶

You can set a limit on the number of devices that may be registered into the user's account. If a user tries to log in to this account using a new device, the registration will fail with an error message.

Storage Vault quota ¶

For more information about Storage Vault quota, please see the Vault > Quota section below.

Protected Items ¶

Overview tab ¶

In the "Description" field, enter a brief name describing what data is being backed up. Select which type of data is to be protected.

Items tab ¶

For more information about the settings for each Protected Item type, please see the Protected Item documentation.

Schedules ¶

Backup jobs can run automatically on a schedule. It is strongly recommended to automate your backups on a regular schedule.

Click the plus button to add a new schedule.

General Schedule options ¶

When a schedule is due to run, the backup job will run automatically to the selected Storage Vault.

You can also configure advanced backup runtime options:

• Skip if already running. If this option is enabled, and another backup job is known by the Cloud Backup Server to exist for the same Protected Item and Storage Vault in "Running" status, then this backup job will be skipped. Skipping a backup job creates a log entry for the job in "Skipped" status.
• Cancel if still running after. You can set a time limit for the backup job. If the backup job exceeds this time limit, the backup job would be cancelled.
• Limit Storage Vault Speed. This option allows you to limit the total speed that Cloud Backup reads and writes to the Storage Vault. The speed limit applies to the total combined read/write bandwidth.
• Limit backup to use only 1 disk thread. When reading multiple files from the local disk for backup, Clout Backup uses multithreading to improve performance. On some machines, this can impact PC performance. If you are experiencing low system performance while the backup job is running, you can try enabling this option to see if it resolves the issue.
• Prefer temporary files instead of RAM (slower). This option reduces backup job performance.
• Allow backup of zero files to succeed. If a backup job completes successfully but did not include any files in the backup, Cloud Backup will by default mark the job as "Error" status. This is a useful feature to help detect against accidental path changes or incorrect file selections. However in some cases you may expect a backup job to succeed with no files included. In that case, you can enable this option.

Schedule times ¶

You can configure the times when this schedule will be executed. You can add multiple times to the same schedule.

The available time-based schedule frequencies are:

• Hourly. The schedule would run every hour. You can choose the minutes past the hour.
• Daily. The schedule would run every day. You can choose the time of day (hours/minutes). The hours are specified in 24-hour time, from 0 to 23.
• Weekly. The schedule would run every week. You can choose the day of the week, and the time of day (hours/minutes). You can choose multiple days of the week.
• Monthly. The schedule would run every month.
• Once only. The schedule would run only when the specified date and time is reached.
• Periodic. The schedule would run regularly at the set frequency. You can use the "Offset" option to help stagger multiple devices that might otherwise all start running simultaneously.

If the device is online, Cloud Backup will try to run the backup job. If the device is not online, or the backup job could not be started, the Cloud Backup Server will inject a "Missed" job into the customer's backup job log. Administrators can use these "Missed" backup job notifications when monitoring the job history for their customers, to ensure that backup jobs run on schedule.

Event-based schedule frequencies are also available.

The available event-based schedule frequencies are:

• Also run when PC starts. The schedule would be initiated immediately after the PC boots.
• Also run when PC starts, if the last job was Missed. The schedule would be initiated immediately after the PC boots if the last backup job for this Protected Item and Storage Vault pair was in Missed status. This allows you to "catch up" missed backups for PCs that are only online at irregular intervals (e.g. laptops).

The time that the "PC starts" is defined as follows: the time that the Cloud Backup background service started, if the system uptime is less than 10 minutes. (This definition is subject to change.)

Commands (Schedule) ¶

You can configure Commands that run before/after this Schedule runs.

The Commands feature on a Schedule works the same way as for Commands on a Protected Item or on a Storage Vault.

Commands (Protected Item) ¶

You can configure Commands that run before/after this Protected Item is backed up.

The Commands feature on a Protected Item works the same way as for Commands on a Storage Vault or on a Schedule.

Retention (Protected Item) ¶

On the Retention tab, you can configure a retention policy to apply when backing up this Protected Item to a specific Storage Vault. If no policy is configured for a specific Storage Vault, the default retention policy for the Storage Vault will apply.

Retention (Storage Vault) ¶

"Retention" is the concept of classifying backed-up data, to determine what data should be kept, and what data can be safely removed in order to free up disk space. For instance, you may choose to keep the last 30 days' of backed-up data, or all data from the last 100 backup jobs; but any data older than this is unlikely to be useful and can be safely removed.

Retention Pass ¶

A "retention pass" is the act of cleaning up data from the Storage Vault that exceeds the configured retention policy.

During a retention pass, Cloud Backup looks at each backed-up job within the Storage Vault and determines whether it meets the retention policy. If the retention policy states that the backed-up job can be safely removed, the backed-up job is removed from the Storage Vault. Once all backed-up jobs are checked against the retention policy, any data chunks that are no longer referenced by a backed-up job can then be pruned to save disk space.

Automatic retention passes ¶

A retention pass may run automatically after each backup job.

Because the retention pass is a destructive action, it temporarily requires the Storage Vault to be completely idle, to take exclusive control over the Storage Vault. Cloud Backup has to determine a possible idle time. Without loss of generality, any possible idle-time always occurs at the end of some backup job. By checking at the end of a backup job as to whether the Storage Vault is idle, Cloud Backup is guaranteed to find the idle time-window as long as such a time-window exists.

An automatic retention pass is not necessarily critical, and so if a backup job comes to an end without the Storage Vault being idle, the retention pass is not immediately "overdue".

The "overdue" rules for automatic retention passes are based on the time since the previous successful retention pass, and, the number of jobs exceeding the configured retention policy. The exact rules are subject to change in future versions of Cloud Backup. As of Cloud Backup 19.12.4, the rules are as follows:

Last retention pass	0-2 jobs exceeding policy	3-9 jobs	10-49 jobs	50+ jobs
less than 24 hours ago	None	Attempt	Attempt	Require
between 24 hours ago and 14 days ago	None	Attempt	Require	Require
between 14 days ago and 21 days ago	Attempt	Attempt	Require	Require
over 21 days ago, or never ran	Require	Require	Require	Require

In the above table,

• "None" means that no automatic retention pass will be attempted at the end of the backup job
• "Attempt" means that Cloud Backup will attempt a retention pass, but not throw an error if the Storage Vault is still busy
• "Require" means that Cloud Backup will attempt a retention pass, and will throw an error if the Storage Vault is still busy

Manual retention passes ¶

You can run a retention pass for a Storage Vault on demand, by right-clicking the Storage Vault within the Cloud Backup application, or an administrator can remotely initiate this by using the live-connection action from the Cloud Backup Server web interface.

In this case because the action was explicitly taken, an error will be raised if the job fails to be performed for any reason.

Preferences ¶

Cloud Backup allows you to configure retention for a Storage Vault, as well as for a Protected Item / Storage Vault pair.

The retention rule for the pair will be used in preference to the retention rule for the Storage Vault. The retention rule for the Storage Vault is therefore only applied when

• there is no overridden retention rule for the Protected Item / Storage Vault pair; or
• the Protected Item is unknown, deleted, or belongs to a different Cloud Backup user account

Retention policies ¶

There are two categories of retention policy:

• A policy that keeps all data forever, and
• A policy that keeps data as long as it falls within any of a set of configurable ranges. You can combine multiple ranges to create a more complex policy.

Retention ranges ¶

A retention range is a time period or job count during which a backup job should be kept.

The following ranges are available:

Range	Parameters	Description
Last [...] backups	Specify a number of backups to keep.	If the backup job was within the last X backups, then the backup job will be kept
All backups in the last [...]	Specify a number of days, weeks, and/or months.	If the backup job occurred recently within the specified range, then the backup job will be kept
All backups newer than a specific date	Specify a specific date.	If the backup job occurred after that specific date, then the backup job will be kept
One backup each day, for the last [...] days	Specify a number of days.	Cloud Backup will keep the single first backup job from each of that most recent days
One backup each week, for the last [...] weeks	Specify a number of weeks, and a day of the week	Cloud Backup will keep the single first backup job that occurred on that day of the wek, for each of that number of most recent weeks
One backup each month, for the last [...] months	Specify a number of months, and a calendar date	Cloud Backup will keep the single first backup job that occurred on that calendar date, for each of that number of most recent months

Future versions of Cloud Backup may make additional Retention Range options available.

Storage Vaults ¶

General tab ¶

On this tab, you can give a name to the Storage Vault. You can use any name; if you have multiple Storage Vaults within an account, we would recommend using a name that identifies the content and/or purpose of the Storage Vault.

On this tab, you can also configure a retention policy for the Storage Vault.

Quota (Storage Vault) ¶

On this tab, an administrator using Cloud Backup Server can configure a quota limit, restricting the total amount of data stored within this Storage Vault.

You can set this property on a per-Storage Vault basis. For example, you could use this feature to limit the amount of data stored on an expensive network storage account, but still allow any amount of data to be stored on a local hard drive.

When a backup job is performed, the total size of the Storage Vault is measured and checked against this quota limit. As the job proceeds, the amount of uploaded data is compared against the remaining available size, and the backup job will be aborted once reaching this limit.

After a quota has been exceeded ¶

A backup job that is abandoned for reaching its Storage Vault quota does not remove the chunks that were uploaded to the Storage Vault. Future backup jobs will almost certainly fail immediately. In this situation, you have the choice between

1. Raising the Storage Vault quota and retrying the backup. This will cause any existing chunks in the vault to be re-used, accelerating the backup quickly up to the point where it was interrupted; or
2. Using the "Apply retention rules now" feature to clear unused chunks from the Storage Vault. This will reduce the data size within the Storage Vault and allow future backups to proceed.

Neither action is taken automatically - you should choose one action to take depending on the situation.

Storage tab ¶

On this tab, you can configure the data storage location for this Storage Vault. A number of types are available, including local disk storage, network accounts, and cloud storage providers.

Commands ¶

The Commands feature on a Protected Item works the same way as for Commands on a Storage Vault or on a Schedule.

Encryption ¶

Cloud Backup automatically enables encryption for all Storage Vaults. This is not customizable; this tab solely serves to indicate that fact to unaware users.

Storage Vault encryption is initialized upon first-use. You can use this tab to tell whether a Storage Vault has been initialized with an encryption key, and when the initialization was performed (according to records in the user account profile).

Devices ¶

You can log in to the same user account from multiple devices.

Each device in an account has their own private Protected Items, but shares the Storage Vaults. Because Storage Vaults are the unit of deduplication, all backups from all devices in the account can be deduplicated against each other. This also means that devices can restore each others' data.

An administrator can revoke devices from your account.

A device has a "friendly name" that is set by the device when it is first registered. The "friendly name" defaults to the hostname of the PC. An administrator can rename devices in an account.

Because additional devices may incur a cost, an administrator can also limit the total number of devices in an account.

If a device is live-connected to the Cloud Backup Server, an administrator can request that the device performs certain actions.

Policies ¶

An administrator can apply additional restrictions to user accounts, using the Policies feature in the Cloud Backup Server web interface.