Windows Server Backup (2012) to Both Local Volume and Remote Folder

Question

As I understand it, you can use Windows Server Backup on Windows Server 2012 R2 to schedule a backup to either a local volume daily (and it stores multiple daily backups) or you can backup to shared folder (and it stores one day that is overwritten each time).

How can I do both? I want to have the daily backups on the local volume in case I need to restore something from the past few weeks, but I want one backup of everything on a removable hard drive in case of fire (and I just grab the drive before exiting the building).

Ideas?

Thanks.

Solution

As you noted: If you schedule a backup to a remote folder, it will overwrite the previous backup each time it runs. If you schedule a backup to a local disk, it manages the backups using VSS in a file-system-level-manipulation-unfriendly way.

What I would recommend:

1. Schedule a regular backup via the GUI to an attached disk and let Windows Server Backup/VSS manage that disk.
2. Share a second backup disk on a different server.
3. Use the command line to schedule a (copy) backup to a remote share via task scheduler (Wbadmin start backup -backupTarget:\\YourSecondServer\SecondDiskShare -vssCopy) via Task Scheduler.

Comments

[Katherine Villyard]

It overwrites automatically.