Remote backup FAQs
What is a remote backup?
With remote backups TrendMiner refers to backups which are not stored on the TrendMiner server itself, but instead are stored remotely in an AWS S3 bucket, an Azure Blob Storage or a local S3 storage solution like MinIO.
A remote backup created by TrendMiner includes all the data you need to restore a fully working TrendMiner installation on a different server, excluding server specific settings like for example hostname, SSL certificates, ... but including the index data, which puts it somewhere between a local backup and a VM snapshot.
How to set up a remote backup?
Remote backups can be created manually or automatically on a fixed time (so called 'scheduled backups').
More info on remote backup creation can be found here: Full
How long does it take to create a remote backup?
The TrendMiner full remote backup mechanism uses deduplication to create the backups.
This implies that when you create a remote backup for the first time you will notice it takes a long time (up to a full day or more for big installations). This is mainly because the first backup needs to upload all data to the remote storage location. A second, third, ... backup will typically go a lot faster as only the differences between the last backup and the current state need to be backupped.
Note
The difference in backup time between the initial backup and consecutive backups does not apply to restores: every restore will first delete all data and then restore the complete state. As a result each restore will take an equal amount of time.
Because of the deduplication consecutive backups will not only take a lot less time, they will also use a lot less storage space (they will also only store the differences with the last created backup).
When the initial backup backup is deleted, only the data which is no longer referenced in consecutive backups is deleted so it will typically not free up a lot of disk space.
How to delete a remote backup?
Remote backups have a retention period of 30 days. This means that the backups are automatically deleted by TrendMiner after 30 days, independent if they were created manually or via a backup schedule.
Important
To avoid that all backups get deleted and no backup is available for disaster recovery we strongly advise to use the built-in scheduled backups next to the recommended regular VM snapshots.
It is not possible to manually delete a remote backup.
If it is really required to delete all remote backups immediately we recommend the following procedure:
Create a new storage location.
Update the remote backup config to use the new (empty) storage location. All remote backups will now disappear from the overview.
Delete the old storage location.