Local backup instructions

Perform full, incremental, and manual backup of entire computers and VMware systems — including multiple hard drives, partitions, and operating systems — using IDrive BMR. The initial backup is a full image backup and subsequent backups are full or incremental as per the schedule. Backup data even when your machine is up and running with minimal resources. You can also create NAS and iSCSI shares within the local device storage and schedule local snapshots.

	Backup your computers
	Backup your VMware machines
	IDrive® BMR Network shares

Backup your computers

Add your computers for backup via a simple agent installation and manage the backup schedule and settings from anywhere. Check system requirements.

To add computers for backup,

1. Sign in to the IDrive BMR device interface.
2. Click the Add Devices button on the top-right corner and download the backup agent from under the Windows tab.
   
3. Once the agent is installed on your computer, the IDrive BMR device will detect the agent and add the Computer for scheduled backup.
   Note: By default, the global backup schedule is set from 6:00 PM to 7:00 AM. You can edit this schedule as required.

   Refer to this FAQ for details on scheduling.

To execute a manual backup, click the Backup Now button corresponding to the required computer.

Click View details to track the backup progress.

Refer to this FAQ for details on how to install the backup agent on multiple PCs.

Backup your VMware machines

Connect to your ESXi hosts and vCenter servers and add the required virtual machines to the IDrive BMR device for backup. Remotely manage the backup settings/schedule from anywhere.

To add virtual machines from VMware ESXi host and vCenter server for backup,

1. Sign in to the IDrive BMR device interface.
2. Navigate to the VMware Servers tab and click Add vCenter Server/Add ESXi Host. This will open a pop-up wizard for adding VMware machines.
   
3. Provide server details such as ESXi host/vCenter name, IP address, username, and password and click Next to connect to the server.
   
4. Select the required virtual machines and click Next.
   Note: IDrive BMR follows VMware's naming conventions and restrictions for virtual machines. Hence names with the special characters colon, quotation marks, and slash (:, ", \, and /) are not supported.
5. Set full or incremental backup schedule parameters and click Next.
6. Verify the details and click Confirm to add.

   Once an ESXi host/vCenter server is added to the IDrive BMR device, backups will occur for the running VMs as per the schedule.

Refer to this FAQ to add new VMs to the added VMware ESXi/vCenter.

To perform an immediate backup of virtual machines, navigate to VMware Servers > ESXi/vCenter and click Backup Now corresponding to the required VMware server.

Click View details to track the backup progress.

IDrive^® BMR Network shares

Create network shares within your IDrive BMR storage for data collaboration over the LAN. You can create an object-level data share via NAS or build a block-level data store that imitates a locally-attached disk via iSCSI.

To create a NAS share/iSCSI share with IDrive BMR,

1. Sign in to the IDrive BMR device web interface.
2. Go to the Network Shares tab.
3. Click Create New Share at the top of the screen. The Create new share wizard appears.
   
4. In the Share type tab, select NAS share/iSCSI share and click Next.
   
5. In the Share settings tab, assign a name to your network share.
   
6. Select Apply new settings to configure the settings of your share. Alternatively,
   select Use the configurations of an existing share and select an existing share from the dropdown to replicate its configurations.
   

   For iSCSI share, assign disk space for the iSCSI target and configure the block size.

   Note: Sector sizes 8128 Bytes or 64 KB are supported for IDrive BMR device firmware version 8.6.0 and above. For older firmware, select 512 Bytes or 4 KB.
7. Click Next.
8. In the Local snapshot tab,
   1. Set the snapshot frequency using the Capture a local snapshot every dropdown.
   2. Select the days for local backup as 'Daily', 'Weekdays', 'Weekend', or select 'Custom' and choose the days.
   3. Set the start and end time for backup.
      
      Note: Here, the 'Start Time' and 'End Time' is a soft cut-off. The actual start time is dependent on the backup pipeline and the actual end time is dependent on the ongoing tasks that are in progress.
   4. In the Snapshot retention settings section, use the slider to set the limit for retaining local snapshots. You can retain up to 100 local snapshots of a network share.
9. Click Next.
10. In the Confirm share tab, review the share and local snapshot summary and click Create. The created share is displayed in the IDrive BMR’s Network Shares tab.
    

Refer to this FAQ for details on configuring a NAS share.

Refer to this FAQ for details on configuring an iSCSI share.