Home Forums Confirming offsite backup

I started using the AC offsite backup. One thing that bothers me is there is no way to confirm and check that the backups are being done. I asked tech support and they said, only they have a access to the server. They checked for me and found that my backups were NOT being done because I had my firewall in place. Now the backup is working--but it makes me nervous that I can't confirm it myself. Any suggestions for the nervous Nelly.

Are you set to get the emails from them when the backup is complete or not? Go to Administrator options, click on Amazing Backup, click Advanced settings and at the bottom, check "send conformation message to....". I have been notified when they were not successful as well as when they are.

Our IT guys periodically do a full restore from our offsite and onsite backups to make sure everything is still working. The messages are reassuring, but no substitute for seeing it actually work.

Thanks Leslie! I hadn't checked the Advanced settings. Checking "send confirmation message" should ease my anxiety. Of course as David points out--I shouldn't rest TOO easy. How difficult is the full restore process? Is it just for IT guys/gals or approachable by not-too tech-savy family docs??

It should not be tough but it might br nice to have someone talk you through it. It can be time consuming so I let IT deal with it and spend my efforts elsewhere. ,

How much data is actually sent when you do the AC offsite backup? Is it the full ENC file each night?

If you do not have the Imported Items checked, then yes it is the full .enc file. It is on compressed, encrypted file.

A few versions back, I was able to download the .enc file from online. I haven't looked at it closely, but when I try to do it from the restore applet, it states you have to call IT support to download it. Again, I may be missing something. This is why I rarely use offsite backup. I would rather they either be onsite or on JungleDisk or some where offsite I can see them.

It's a great idea to make sure your backups are not only there but work as David said. But, I should add to what he is saying. I am sure this is obvious, but don't just restore them to your real databases. You either need a virtual machine or a separate computer that you can test it on.

It is not difficult at all if you are talking about restoring from an onsite backup. I have about a GB of data from seven years, and it takes about three mouse clicks and three minutes to do a full restore. If you want I can do a video.

Perhaps a silly question, but Bert, why wouldn't you want to back up Imported Items? And, yes, thanks for the suggestion about setting up a test system to run restore. I'm sure my wife wouldn't mind offering her Dell for a little "side job." :-)

Hi Jhowland,

Your question is not silly and really has two answers. When you do not choose to back up Imported Items (hereafter called II), your .enc backup will contain everything you need to fully restore AC (the program, patients data, messages, everything). It generally takes me about two minutes to do a full back up if it isn't also uploaded. If uploaded, it takes about five minutes.

II on the other hand grow until they are 6, 7, 15GBs in size, making the backup unwieldy. If you are only backing up locally, you can get away with it, but it will still take more time.

I prefer to back up just the program, and back up the II separately with backup software. You can even just copy and paste.

If you are going to utilize the feature of backing up online, then you will quickly find that you won't be able to backup your II as there will just not be enough bandwidth to allow you to do it efficiently.

I certainly cannot speak to this as I have not had to restore with II, but my sense is, the more you are backing up, the more likely the restore file may not work when you need it to. (this is just my logic).

Depending on your overall backup strategy, you will have to decide how you want to do it. Certainly, if you have around 10GBs of II, you will know with just one backup how long it takes.

Also, recall that until AC decides to do away with what I consider the rather silly decision to automatically store backup files IN the AC folder, it won't take long until your hard drive is taken up by these backups. It is easy to go in manually and delete these, but I do it every two weeks or so and you would have to do it every three to four days, again depending on the size of your II.

Thanks again! I haven't started importing yet, but will keep your suggestions in mind as I move forward.

Brewer, Maine--I got my start in medicine working for a wonderful old doctor way up in Eastport, Maine. To get there I'd drive to Bangor and then through Brewer and out the "Airline"--Route 9. This was in 1974 when the Airline was a beautiful, but VERY empty stretch of highway for mile after mile.

Small world. It's still rather empty, although not VERY.

Where are you from now?

or you can automate this with a program like Cyber-D autodelete.

Cool. I have always used batch files, but have had issues with those.

I will take a look at that.

I have 7.5 GB of imported items. When I tried to back up to AC it timed out and failed. I would prefer to be able to back up my imported items every night to AC but I do not. I do back them up 3 times weekly to an external hard drive.

They should have a full backup for .enc and an option for incremental or differential for II. That would work. Can I make 81 into 82?

Bert, in answer to your question, i've been in practice in a little town in Massachusetts since 1988.

A simple cheep backup program to move things around on your server to different backup shares is called secondcopy
http://www.centered.com/pricing.html. Does a great job and keeps as many versions as you want. As for offsite always keep a folder on you server called test-backup. Just toss some junk in the folder let your backup program pict it up. Try to restore it every so often just to make sure it works.