HBS 3 and Version Management

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crusader
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Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2019 4:22 am

HBS 3 and Version Management

Post by crusader »

I have looked all over the QNAP site for a manual on HBS3, no luck.

What I am looking for is an explanation on how Smart Versioning works.
And is there a way to discard old backups so you can fee up space.
P3R
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Re: HBS 3 and Version Management

Post by P3R »

crusader wrote: Fri Oct 11, 2019 3:27 am I have looked all over the QNAP site for a manual on HBS3, no luck.
I don't think one exist but on the other hand, it's very complicated to do a good manual for a GUI application. It's in my opinion better to have help within the GUI and I think HBS 3 is pretty good with that. Hover the cursor over the blue circles with an "i" in it.

If there's something that you don't understand, you're welcome to ask about it here.
What I am looking for is an explanation on how Smart Versioning works.
You set the number of versions that you want to keep for hours, days, weeks and months respectively.

Here's an example of how I configured my backup and why I did it that way. I do nightly backups with Smart versioning set at 0 hours, 5 days, 3 weeks and 6 months.

Since I don't want to keep multiple versions per day I set hour versions at 0.
I keep the last 5 days of backup versions. More I considered a waste as if I need anything older than 5 days I could as well use the last weekly backup which will be at most 7 days old.
I keep the last 3 weeks of backup versions. More I consider a waste as if I need anything older than 3 weeks I could as well use the last monthly backup which will be at most 4 weeks old.
I keep the last 6 months as it's a decent compromise with the amount of backup destination storage I have and I don't really see a need to go more than 6 months back.

It's not rocket science and it won't blow up if you experiment with it. It's clever to start with fewer versions in the beginning though (to not fill the destination up completely) and then slowly work your way up when you've learned how it works.
And is there a way to discard old backups so you can fee up space.
In previous versions without QuDedup it was easy as then you could simply delete older versions. As QuDedup now seem to be mandatory, I don't know. I hope that you can simply reconfigure the versioning settings and it will delete older versions for you.
RAID have never ever been a replacement for backups. Without backups on a different system (preferably placed at another site), you will eventually lose data!

A non-RAID configuration (including RAID 0, which isn't really RAID) with a backup on a separate media protects your data far better than any RAID-volume without backup.

All data storage consists of both the primary storage and the backups. It's your money and your data, spend the storage budget wisely or pay with your data!
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