The SMB/CIFS backup method connects to a share on the target server with Server Message Block protocol. SMB/CIFS is mainly used on Microsoft Windows Networks.

NOTE: Backup and archive policies only work with existing shares and subdirectories.

If a server has a share at, for example, archive and that directory is empty, when the user configures archive/ssb1 (or similar) as a backup/archive share, it will fail.

 Caution:

The CIFS implementation of NetApp storage devices is not compatible with the CIFS implementation used in syslog-ng Store Box (SSB), therefore it is not possible to create backups and archives from SSB to NetApp devices using the CIFS protocol (the operation fails with a similar error message: /opt/ssb/mnt/14719217504d41370514043/reports/2010": Permission denied (13) '2010/day/' rsync: failed to set times on).

To overcome this problem, either:

  • use the NFS protocol to access your NetApp devices, or

  • use a backup device that has a CIFS implementation compatible with SSB, for example, Windows or Linux Samba.

  1. Navigate to Policies > Backup & Archive/Cleanup, and click in the Backup policies section to create a new backup policy.

    Figure 5: Policies > Backup & Archive/Cleanup > Backup policies — Configure backup

  2. Enter a name for the backup policy (for example, main-backup).

  3. Enter the time when the backup process should start into the Start time field, in HH:MM format (for example, 23:30).

  4. Enter the IP address or the hostname of the remote server into the Target server field (for example, backup.example.com).

  1. Select Target settings > SMB/CIFS.

    NOTE: From SSB version 5.2.0, SSB only supports SMB 2.1 and later. Make sure that your operating system with the Samba share that you want to mount, supports SMB 2.1 or later. Otherwise, SSB cannot mount the remote share.

    Figure 6: Policies > Backup & Archive/Cleanup > Backup policies — Configure backup via SMB/CIFS

  2. Enter the username used to logon to the remote server into the Username field, and corresponding password into the Password field.

    NOTE: NULL sessions (sessions without authentication) are not supported, authentication is required in all cases.

    NOTE: The syslog-ng Store Box (SSB) appliance accepts passwords that are not longer than 150 characters. The following special characters can be used:

    ! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . / : ; < > = ? @ [ ] ^ - ` { | } \ _ ~

  3. Enter the name of the share into the Share field.

    SSB saves all data into this directory, automatically creating the subdirectories. Backups of log files are stored in the data, configuration backups in the config subdirectory.

  4. Enter the domain name of the target server into the Domain field.

  1. To receive email notification of the backup, select the Send notification on errors only or the Send notification on all events option. Notifications are sent to the administrator email address set on the Management tab.

    To include the list of files in the email, select Send notification on all events and enable the Include file list option. However, note that if list is very long, the SSB web interface might become unaccessible. In this case, set the Maximum number of files in notification lower. After this number has been reached, file names will be omitted from the notification.

    NOTE: This email notification is sent to the administrator's email address, while the alerts are sent to the alert email address (see Configuring system monitoring on SSB)..

  2. Click .

  3. To assign the backup policy to a logspace, see Creating data backups.