Creating a new job

A new backup job can be created by clicking on the “+” symbol in the sidebar in the main menu. A new menu opens with a wizard that guides you through the job creation process. The individual steps are explained in more detail below:

The first step is to provide general information about the new job to create.

• A unique job name must be assigned
• If you want nxmBackup to send a report by email after each job execution, the “Receive mail notifications” option must be activated. Attention: This option only works if the mail parameters have been configured in the system settings, otherwise no mails will be sent
• You must select whether incremental backups should be created. If not, only full backups are created
• It must be selected whether to use data deduplication. This deduplication makes the backups created slightly smaller, but a backup and a restore process take significantly more time.
• You must choose whether to use LiveBackup technology. If in doubt, this option should not be activated. For further information on this, see: LiveBackup

In the second step, the virtual machines to be backed up are selected. All virtual machines found on the local system are displayed in the list. Clicking on an entry selects it and adds it to the job. Only virtual machines located on the local system on which nxmBackup is installed on are displayed. Attention: If LiveBackup technology was selected in “Step 1”, only one virtual machine can be added to the job.

The third step is to set the schedule. Here you can specify the time interval at which the job starts automatically. A distinction can essentially be made between three time intervals: hourly, daily and weekly. Details such as minute, hour and day of the week can then be specified in the lower part of the assistant. However, depending on the selected time interval, some of these options may be disabled.

In the fourth step, it is determined which procedure and with which parameters the backups should rotate. The following explains the two types of rotation, “Blockrotation” and “Merge”:

• Blockrotation: In this process, entire blocks are removed according to specifications. A block always consists of a full backup and all incremental backups based on it. The setting “Full backup by number of backups” determines how many backups a block contains. How many blocks should be kept is determined by the “Number of blocks to keep” setting. For example, if this option is set to “2”, the oldest complete block will be deleted as soon as a third block is completed and the fourth block would begin. This ensures that at least “2” blocks are always completely preserved.
• Merge: This option combines the oldest backups. A new “synthetic” full backup is created from a full backup and an incremental backup. This reduces the number of backups stored by one. If two full backups follow each other, they will not be merged, but the oldest will be deleted. The “Full backup by number of backups” option determines how many backups a block consists of. For more information on “Blocks”, see the “Block rotation” section. The “Number of backups to keep” option determines how many backups should be kept in total. When this number is exceeded, the oldest two backups are merged.

The last step is to determine where the backups should be saved. There are two options for “Target Type”: “Local harddrive” and “Network drive”:

• Local harddrive: Here the backup is stored on a local drive. The target path can be selected in the file system structure that can be seen.
• Network drive: Here the backup is stored on a network drive (SMB). In the lower part of the window, a valid UNC path is specified in the following format: \\server\share . Appropriate user data is entered below. These can be validated by clicking on “Check credentials”.

After clicking next, the wizard closes and the new job is displayed in the main menu in the list on the left side of the screen.