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Backup of Windows Custom VMs (zapps)

The Zynstra Custom VMs (VMs with hostnames beginning zapp) are backed up, and you need to be aware of the different backup regimes for the different drives.

  • The C: drive is backed up in full every every Thursday night starting from at 23:00
  • The D: drive is NOT backed up at all
  • The E: drive is backed up incrementally every night at approx 23:00, and a full backup is done every Friday at approx 23:00

You should arrange to place the data from the D: drive that you want to be backed up onto the E: drive each day of the week and then remove that data just before placing the next set of data in that folder in preparation for the next backup cycle.

Further details are below, which is taken from our Backup Overview article here:

Zynstra Cusrtom VMs have a system image backup that happens every Thursday night of the OS C: drive. (Zynstra managed VMs such ZMAIL also have system image backups on Thursday nights). The data D: drive is not backed up as part of the system image backup as the server has no understanding of the most appropriate backup regime to apply to the kind of data stored on the C: drive.

For this reason, each Custom VM has an E: drive on which the Service Provider is invited to place at the desired intervals the data to be backed up (since the Service Provider will have a good understanding of the backup regime that is most appropriate for the kind of data being stored on the D: drive).  

  • Weekly, there is an image backup of the whole of the C: (OS) drive – this is a VM snapshot backup, which involves shutting down the VM, taking a snapshot, starting up the VM and then backing up the snapshot.
  • Daily, there is an incremental backup of the whole of the E: drive starting from 23:00
  • Weekly there is a full backup of the whole of the E: drive starting from 23:00
Note that all backup jobs run sequentially one after the other rather than concurrently to not cause excessive IO load on the disk subsystem, so the start time of a job may be some time after 11pm. Backup jobs that do not involve a restart or downtime (such as data backups) are permitted to run during the working day, but system image jobs that involve a system restart will not run if outside the backup window which is 11pm to 7am.
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