The Copy data to a remote server using 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.

When deployed from the Azure Marketplace, you can use Azure File storage shares for Backup and Archive Policies. This is very useful as you can change the quota for the file storage dynamically, so the cumulative size of the audit trails is not limited to the OS disk size. You can set up this share as normal SMB shares in your Backup and Archive policies. You can obtain the parameters for the policy from the Azure portal.

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/scb1 (or similar) as a backup/archive share, it will fail.

 Caution:

When you try to create backups and archives from SPS to NetApp devices using the CIFS protocol, the operation may fail with a similar error message: /opt/scb/mnt/14719217504d41370514043/reports/2010": Permission denied (13) '2010/day/' rsync: failed to set times on.

To overcome this problem, grant the SPS user "Full Control" access rights to the CIFS share on the NetApp device.

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

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

  3. Enter the time when the backup process should start into the Start time field in HH:MM format (for example, 23:00).

    You can add the start time for additional backup processes.

    		 Caution:

    When specifying an additional start time, ensure that the previous backup process finishes before the new backup process starts.

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

    Use an IPv4 address.

  1. Select Copy data to a remote server using SMB/CIFS from the Copy data from PSM radio buttons.

    Figure 85: Policies > Backup & Archive > Backup policies — Configuring backups through SMB/CIFS

  2. Enter the username used to log on to the remote server into the Username field, or select the Anonymous login option.

    Usernames can contain space.

  3. Enter the password corresponding to the username into the Password field.

    NOTE: SPS accepts passwords that are not longer than 150 characters and supports the following characters:

    • Letters A-Z, a-z

    • Numbers 0-9

    • The space character

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

  4. Enter the name and directory path of the share into the Share field. Use the following format:

    share_name/path/to/directory

    You can use backslashes and forward slashes as well.

    SPS saves all data into this directory, automatically creating the subdirectories. Backups of audit-trails are stored in the data, configuration backups in the config subdirectory.

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

  1. Select which SMB protocol to use when SPS connects to the server in the Protocol version field. Servers are usually backwards compatible with earlier protocol versions (for example, a server that supports version 2.1 supports versions 2.0 and 1.0 as well).

  1. When your SPS instance is a node in a cluster, select Include the Cluster Node ID in the path. This ensures that the ID of the node is included in the path of the relevant directory, which is required to prevent cluster nodes from backing up data to the same location, and so overwriting each other's data and resulting in data loss. In addition, having the node's ID in the directory name also enables easy identification.

    		 Caution:

    Hazard of data loss

    Unchecking Include the Cluster Node ID in the path when your SPS is a node in a cluster can result in data loss if you have configured configuration synchronization across your cluster nodes.

  1. To receive e-mail 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 e-mail address set on the Management tab.

    To include the list of files in the e-mail, select Send notification on all events and enable the Include file list option. However, note that if the list is very long (for example, SPS stores over 20000 audit trails), the SPS 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 e-mail notification is different from the one set on the Alerting & Monitoring tab. This notification is sent to the administrator's e-mail address, while the alerts are sent to the alert e-mail address (see Configuring system monitoring on SPS).

  2. Click .

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