Jamii: /* See Also */

2018-05-03T19:18:09Z

Cheeks: Created page with 'Here are some tips for issues you may encounter relating to the size of your backup data. ===I Want My Quota to Grow Automatically=== By default you specify what quota you want ...'

2009-07-28T17:40:09Z

Created page with 'Here are some tips for issues you may encounter relating to the size of your backup data. ===I Want My Quota to Grow Automatically=== By default you specify what quota you want ...'

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Here are some tips for issues you may encounter relating to the size of your backup data.

===I Want My Quota to Grow Automatically===
By default you specify what quota you want for your backups. If you run out of space on the server, your backups will fail with a Quota Error. Some people would prefer to have the system automatically increase/decrease the amount of quota for their account.

The software we use for the BUS does not natively support this kind of dynamic quota, but SWCP has designed an add-on which provides this. It is not perfect, but it works pretty well. If you choose Dynamic Quota, we run a process on the backup server to monitor your space usage, and increase/decrease your quota as your usage goes up or down. The actual quota set for your account will be approximately 1-2GB more than the current usage. That grace factor is needed to prevent a quota error if your account is uploading a large amount of data at once. For billing, our system looks at your quota setting each day, and calculates the average quota setting for the month. Your are billed for your average usage. (e.g. if you temporarily used an extra 10GB for 2 weeks, then went back down to "normal", you are not billed for the extra 10GB for the whole month, just the 2 weeks it was in use).

Features and caveats of Dynamic Quota:
* Every time the system changes your quota, it sends you an email, so you can keep track of the changes.
* If you want to switch to Dynamic Quota (or back to Static Quota), just email help@swcp.com
* It is still possible to get a quota error, if something happens to use a lot of new space very quickly. For example, if you change permissions on 10,000 files, those 10,000 files will be copied to the retention area on your next backup. This consumes a lot of space, very quickly (faster than the system can notice and update your quota). This is rare. The bottom line is, if you get a Quota Error when your are on Dynamic Quota, please contact the help desk to investigate.

===What is the Retention Area?===
Let's say you delete a file on your computer. At the next backup, the BUS software tells the server that this file you had has been deleted. The BUS server copies that file to a "retention area" to be saved in case you decide you want to recover it later. The "Retention Period" item in the settings for your Backup Set controls how long the deleted file will be saved on the backup server.

The same thing happens when you change a file. Let's say you edit a spreadsheet on Tuesday, and accidentally delete one of the sheets without realizing it. During the next backup, the BUS server saves the previous copy of your file in the retention area, then uploads your new copy. Now on Friday you open the spreadsheet and discover the missing sheet. You can use BUS to restore the file as it existed in the Monday night backup (before it got damaged on Tuesday). As long as your Retention Period is long enough to have a copy of the file from before it was changed, you can recover it.

The BUS server is clever about how it saves this retention data. Instead of saving a copy of the whole file, it only saves the chunks of the file that are different from the new file. This keeps the retention area from getting too huge, but if your system sees a lot of activity it can be sizeable.

====What Retention Period Should I Use?====
The answer to this question varies from person to person, business to business. The default is 7 days, which gives you a week to realize that a file was accidentally deleted, or erroneously edited as in the spreadsheet example above. But if you didn't notice the mistake for 2 weeks, you would not be able to recover the file from before the file was damaged.

Many people use a much longer retention period. 45 days is a common setting in an environment where you have many monthly tasks. For example, if you have a report to do each month which involves a few spreadsheets and documents, it's good to have backups of those which go back at least a month. Add in a couple more weeks to compensate for the possibility of someone being out on vacation or illness, and 45 days sounds about right.

And some people really like the peace of mind of knowing they can recover historical data if they need it, even if they don't know they need it until months later. In that case, a 1-year or longer retention period is just the thing. If the files in question are very active, that can require use of significant disk space; if they change infrequently, like once a month, then it won't require much at all.

==See Also==
[[Category: Bus]]

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BUS Quota Size Issues - Revision history

Jamii: /* See Also */

Cheeks: Created page with 'Here are some tips for issues you may encounter relating to the size of your backup data. ===I Want My Quota to Grow Automatically=== By default you specify what quota you want ...'