How to backup specific files and folders using BluVault?

For enterprises, including endpoint data backup as part of their data protection strategy has become imperative. With the workforce going mobile and diminished boundaries between work and home, enterprises are increasingly relying on backups as insurance against data loss and thefts.

While backing up endpoint data is a good plan, considering ever-increasing workloads and volumes of data being generated daily, just the act of making a secondary copy could take a significant toll on the enterprise’s storage capacity and network bandwidth. It is important to ensure that only the right data that is crucial for the business is being backed up.

Parablu, through its endpoint backup solution – BluVault for Endpoints, offers an easy way to set up backup policies which specify what folders or file types to back up. IT Admins can remotely enrol an endpoint, install the BluVault agent, and push out policies to ensure data backup compliance for a user within minutes.

Steps for how to backup specific files and folders using BluVault

Here is how you can create a backup policy to specify certain folders, and files types to be excluded while backing up:

1. Login to Parablu Portal

2. On the Parablu Portal Home, go to Policies

3. On the Policy Management page, click Backup Policies

4. On the Backup Policies page, click the Create New Policy button

5. On the Create New Policy page, give a name and description to the policy and go to the General tab

6. Under the Backup Information section, create a schedule for the backup and review the following exclusion options:

• Default Folders to Backup: Enter the path of the folder that needs to be backed up or use the Default Folders section to customize the default options
• Exclusion Folder Path: Specify the path of the folder that needs to be excluded

7. Under the Filters section, you can create an additional layer of filter to exclude certain types of files. 

8. Click the Create New Filter link and on the Create Filter prompt, give a name to the filter and specify the file type in the Filters field

9. Click Save Changes to go back to the Create New Policy page

10. Click Save to complete creating the policy

11. Go back to Parablu Portal Home, identify the users, and apply this policy.

Once done, backup of the selected folders will get triggered at the scheduled time and specified folders and file types for exclusion will be excluded.

Excluding folders and file types is one good way to optimize the use of enterprise resources for backups.   While BluVault also has many built-in mechanisms such as Incrementals Forever, Partial File Transfers and De-duplication to help conserve network bandwidth – using  file and folder exclusion can be an effective way for an Backup Administrator to take control and influence resource usage.  BluVault also allows several other controls to Backup Administrators such as CPU and bandwidth throttling – which we will cover in subsequent posts.

If you want to understand more about Parablu’s offerings and get a quick demo, do reach out to our experts!