Perform a first backup to disk and integrate the data

As part of an external backup, and depending on the upload speed to the Internet, the first (full) backup can be very long. To secure data more efficiently, it is worthwhile to go through a backup to disk and manual data integration on the storage servers.

Prerequisites

The client's backup account must be created and installed on the target machine.

The first backup to disk is a real backup (with encryption, compression and deduplication). It is not a simple file copy.

First backup to disk

Here are the steps to make a first backup to disk:

Configure your backup account normally (selections, schedules, reports).
Go back to the selection tab, then at the bottom, in the "Backup" section, choose your target disk as backup destination.
Start your manual backup by clicking the "Start a backup immediately" button.
After the backup is complete, disconnect the drive to perform the manual data integration.

If you don't manage your storage servers, you only have to post the disk containing your encrypted data. Otherwise, you can carry on with this procedure.

Manually Integrating Data

Once backup is complete, here's how to integrate data on your server(s):

Connect your USB drive to your storage server and mount it.
Launch the screen utility
Put yourself in the storage directory of your backup to disk. The name of the directory consists of the name of the backup account and the time stamp of the backup to disk.
Then type the following command: arx-account integrate <account_name> --archive-path = ., making sure to replace with the real account name.
Once the integration is started, you can detach yourself from the screen by pressing Ctrl + a and Ctrl + d. You can then close your session.
To resume your screen, type the command screen -r and if the integration is complete you will be able to leave screen.

When integration is complete, you can:

Integrate data identically on other servers in the account
Force a manual synchronization of the account, so that the data is propagated on all the servers
Wait for automatic account synchronization

What to do to finish?

Nothing ! Everything is automatic.

At the end of the integration, the integration locks are removed automatically and the backup will automatically trigger at the next schedule.