Creating a Backup on an External USB Drive

This lesson will illustrate the necessary steps to create a backup file that is stored an external USB thumb drive plugged directly into an Endian Appliance.

Format and Plug in USB Drive

It's recommended to format your USB drive to a generic Microsoft FAT or FAT32 style as this is recognized by Endian. To do so, use the following generic instructions:

If you're using Windows (XP, Vista, Win7), you can format a drive by right-clicking the drive in My Computer and select Format

If you're using Mac OS X, you can format a drive using the Disk Utility (by default located in the Utilities folder of you Applications directory)

If you're using Linux, some distributions provide a graphical disk utility or you can use the command "sudo mkfs.vfat /dev/sda1" (where sda1 is the partition you wish to format)

The next step is to plug in an the external USB (thumb) drive to your Endian device via the USB port.

Create Backup

Under System > Backup, select the Create New Backup item to begin the process.

Configure Backup Settings

Before you begin you'll need to select the items you wish to be included in the backup. If you are creating a full backup, then you should select all of the items to be included (as shown above). The Endian should automatically detect your USB drive and provide the option to create the backup on the USB stick.

Note

When backing up a software or virtual Appliance, it is necessary to not tick the Include hardware data option, because when restoring this backup (on another virtual machine, a different hardware, or even after an upgrade) some hardware data on the new appliance might be incorrect. The most notable example is that Network Interface Cards will be renamed after the restore and as a consequence, firewall rules, uplinks, policy routing rules and other services might stop working.

Once this is done, select Create Backup to create the file.

Verify Completion

Once the process is done (may take a few minutes), you should see a confirmation screen like the above. You can then download the file to your local computer, delete the backup, or perform a restore using that specific backup using the Action items.