Managing Time Machine clients

All out clients are 10.6.5. Our backup server is 10.6.4.
Is anybody using Time Machine to backup clients to server and managing preferences to exclude folders or files?
For example, all our mail is IMAP so we could exclude ~/Library/Mail. We'd also like to exclude /System and /Applications, etc.
The default Snow Leopard Server MCX settings backup everything that is on the boot drive.
Thanks,
b.

Looking to find out the same info, others have not had success but the code may get you started down the right path. See:
http://lists.apple.com/archives/client-management/2008/Dec/msg00043.html
Having gotten this to work through managed preferences on a client bound to my OS X Server, I am now curious how/if this would work through pushing out local MCX preferences as well. Have not yet gotten it to work. I copy the prefs down to the client, but it just does not seem to list the server TimeMachine share in the System Preferences at all. Strange.

Similar Messages

How to manage Time Machine backups

Is there any way to manage time Machine Backups?
The things I want to do are:
* Selectively trim old backups for files I longer need
* Delete whole backups to maintain a trimmer backup disk
* Restart the whole backup process from time to time (purge and start over)
I know how the backups works (read the Ars Technica article) but the file system won't give me permissions to manually purge data. I suppose I could mess with the permissions but I'm not sure the effect on TM.
After the upgrade to Leopard, and after I setup Time Machine I started to do a purge of old files and data I just don't need anymore. But of course now there's several backups of that data. And while I know TM uses hard links so its not taking up a lot of extra space, the Gig I could recoup may be worth it for the long haul of having backups.

Not really the original point of the question, but since you mentioned it...
Couldn't time machine be used as archival as long as you have space? Its incremental, its fairly efficient since it uses hard links, and even archives have old data you don't need.
But it does beg another question. It would be nice if Apple could provide a list of directories that could be excluded in the event you want to run a clean install and then restore only files that effect a user and his/her preferences.
I suppose the Home directory would be the simplest answer, but even that includes a lot of Apps and Library files that really aren't necessary.
Maybe its just best to exclude nothing and buy a bigger backup drive. And then maybe periodically start over. Which was one of my original questions.
How does one start over? Just turn off time machine and format the backup drive?
Just pondering (and a bit of rambling) at this point.

Time Machine client on Server?

Can I use Time Machine to back up a file share? I'm thinking of attaching 2 external drives to a mac mini server, the first HD to host an network file share, the second would be a RAID for Time Machine backups of the file share HD.
Does Lion Server come with the Time Machine client software?
Thnx

OS X Lion already comes with all the software you need. If your server is running Time Machine and has a share that's set up to broadcast it's availability, the client will show that there's a disk available when you set things up.
Just select the network share as a backup destination and voila!
HTH
-Graham

Profile Manager Time Machine Configuration

Hi all,
all my Mac clients are managed by a Mountain Lion Server with Profile Manager. I want, that all clients are automatically backed up with TimeMachine. On the server the TimeMachine service is started. How can I manage my clients - using the Profile Manager - to use the Server for automatic backups?
On Snow Leopard and Lion I used the Workgroup Manager. Here it was possible to do the TimeMachine configuration for managed clients. How does this work with Mountain Lion?
Thanks,
Frank.

Same questions here. Wanting to deploy time machine configs on several macs via the profile manager, so far no success.
I played around with payloads and all-in-one username / passwords urls. e.g.: afp://b%short_name%:[email protected]:/b%short_name%
On the mac's the profile is deployed but it asks for the username / password straight after login which is exactly what I want to avoid.
Even if username / password is entered correctly, tmutil destinationinfo is showing a wrong configuration like:
# tmutil destinationinfo
====================================================
Name          : busername
Kind          : Network
URL           : afp://username@busername:[email protected]:/busername
Mount Point   : /Volumes/busername
ID            : 84CDA90E-9D21-4003-B47E-F27EA210047E
Notice the username@ added after afp:// and before the preset credentials.
If anyone knows a workaround or a better approach, it would probably help some people.
Thanks

Profile Manager & Time Machine Restore

Has anyone had luck with restoring the Profile Manager database from a Time Machine backup?
We left for the holidays and everything was just spiffy with it. When we returned the server was locked hard. Upon reboot, when you try to go into the Profile Manager admin web page, right after login, you immediately get "A Server Error has Occured [reload]". Start/stop of Profile Manger has no effect, but in Server.app it is running.
We think maybe the SQL database was corrupted sometime over break and want to restore it. It's in /Library/Server/Profile Manger/
Curious,
-Steve

I also have the same issue.
I have a server which manages ipads using profile manager.
I have restored a Mac Mini with the Server App and Profile Manager from a Time Machine backup. All my settings, devices and device groups are there but when i try and push anything out to an ipad the task just sits there pending and nothing happens. The ipad is is connected to the same network and i can ping the IP of the ipad from network utility on the server.
Any ideas?
Thanks

Success with Time Machine clients

Is anyone using MCX settings to successfully backup a number of 10.6 clients to a 10.6 server via Time Machine?
Are there any guidelines for numbers of clients, amounts of data, etc.
b.

Pondini wrote:
Then why are you bothering to use Time Machine at all, since you know it's likely to fail?
I'm not convinced it's going to fail tomorrow. It's been working for so long now I'm wondering if it's going to fail rather than when especially since having a similar experience using it with a different configuration...
During a visit with my sister-in-law, we bought a new iMac for her and I enabled Time Machine. It came with a bus powered iomega usb drive as a freebie that I set up as the backup disk. When I came back to visit a few months later I discovered that her backup had corrupted just like mine had except no Airport Express was involved.
Searching through Apple's KB I was left wondering why I had identical failures with both supported (hers) and unsupported configurations (mine).
I changed the backups on her iMac to daily and put her machine on a UPS like I did with mine and it's been working every since.
That got me wondering if the frequency of the backups increases likelihood of failure. However, I've updated the firmware on my Airport Express several times in the last 18 months so I really can't say with certainty that a particular action is a cure.
Why not use CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper? They're more suited to daily backups.
I do like the Time Machine interface but largely because I didn't know Time Machine wasn't supposed to work the last time I started from scratch.
CCC is awesome. I've used it many times. Can I rely on it to backup to an Airport Express mounted USB drive or do I have to connect it directly? The latter is less appealing for wi-fi connected laptops.

Managing Time Machine Disk Space

I have a NAS server that I use to back up all my computers (3 PCs, and 2 Macs). For various reasons that I won't bore you with, I cannot partition that storage into multiple partitions. Is there a way to control how much disk Time Machine uses before it starts dropping old backups? I do not want it to use up unecessary space to keep backup longer than needed. I there a way to control the amount of disk space available to TM or control how long to keep backups?
Thanks.

Thanks for the reply but this link did not give me anything new that I did not know. Good overview of Time Machine but did not answer the question.

Time machine client backup restore to a new mac mini server?

I just bought a new Mac Mini server and its up and running. My question is can I restore the Time Machine backup from my MacBook Pro to the server drive? When I select restore it wants to erase the server drive, is that a good idea?

This is a bit of a guess... But I Imagine you would have to start with the workstation OS install DVD first, and go from there at the appropriate point. Any chance you have or could make a CCC backup instead? I am assuming you could boot a mini server from a backup of mini non-server. Then you could copy it over. This is probably worth a phone call to Apple TAC

Time Machine Service backup it's self?

Ok I have the Time Machine service setup and running and my Client systems can see it and use it.
My server it's self however can not see the service.
I want to use TM to backup the server into the same Time Machine Backups folder and not the root level of another drive.
Is this posible? Seams like it should be as simple as doing the same setup as the clients...

In order to back up the configuration and state of some services the server needs them to termporarily be turned off. This includes the backing up of Time Machine.
So in order to back up the Time Machine configuration and details about what computers it is backing up where, the server would need to turn off the Time Machine backup service. But if it's turned off, it can't use it to back things up.
Similarly, imagine you needed to restore the backup. To view the backups you would need the Time Machine backup service to be working. But you can't overwrite the configuration and status information of a service which is turned on, because that would confuse the process doing the serving. But if the process is turned off, you can't use it to restore the backup.
So do what Linc said: use the System Preferences panel to back the computer up, and don't back it up to the same device you're backing up its Time Machine clients to.

Time Machine will not delete.

Greetings.
The problem I'm having is that my 300GB backup disk is full. Time Machine says there is not enough room and it will not delete old backups to make room. How can I get it to do its thing?
Thank you.

dmac,
This might help...
*_“This Backup is Too Large for the Backup Volume”_*
First, much depends on the size of your Mac’s internal hard disk, the quantity of data it contains, and the size of the hard disk designated for Time Machine backups. It is recommended that any hard disk designated for Time Machine backups be +at least+ twice as large as the hard disk it is backing up from. You see, the more space it has to grow, the greater the history it can preserve.
*Disk Management*
Time Machine is designed to use the space it is given as economically as possible. When backups reach the limit of expansion, Time Machine will begin to delete old backups to make way for newer data. The less space you provide for backups the sooner older data will be discarded. [http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/15137.html]
However, Time Machine will only delete what it considers “expired”. Within the Console Logs this process is referred to as “thinning”. It appears that many of these “expired” backups are deleted when hourly backups are consolidated into daily backups and daily backups are consolidated into weekly backups. This consolidation takes place once hourly backups reach 24 hours old and daily backups reach about 30 days old. Weekly backups will only be deleted, or ‘thinned’, once the backup drive nears full capacity.
One thing seems for sure, though; If a new incremental backup happens to be larger than what Time Machine currently considers “expired” then you will get the message “This backup is too large for the backup volume.” In other words, Time Machine believes it would have to sacrifice to much to accommodate the latest incremental backup. This is probably why Time Machine always overestimates incremental backups by 2 to 10 times the actual size of the data currently being backed up. Within the Console logs this is referred to as “padding”. This is so that backup files never actually reach the physically limits of the backup disk itself.
There appears to be a method for getting around this that may work for some. Bear in mind that it will involve deleting older backups that Time Machine does not yet consider “expired”. But it should allow you to complete the current backup attempt while at the same time preserving some of the previous backups. It is fitting, as well, to remind users that backup disks should be +at least+ twice as large as your Macs’ internal hard disk.
The Time Machine error message tells you how much space the current backup requires.
Using that measurement, go into the Time Machine Preferences and click “Options…”.
Now using the Exclusion List, begin adding things like System & Library folders, and anything else that will get the “Total Included…” figure down to the amount that Time Machine reported was necessary. Leave your User folder for last. If it is still not enough, you can begin including folder within your Home folder.
Once the “Total Included…” is below what Time Machine requires, then perform a backup. During the backup, Time Machine perform certain house-keeping duties that frees up additional space.
Once the backup is complete, check Time Machine Prefs “Available:” line. You may discover that you now have more room than expected.
Go back to the Exclusion List and begin removing items until the “Total Included…” is again just under what “Available” states.
Perform another backup. Again more room may become available. You may have to repeat this procedure several time until a backup includes ALL of your desired files.
*Backups WAY Too Large*
If an initial full backup or a subsequent incremental backup is tens or hundreds of Gigs larger than expected, check to see that all unwanted external hard disks are still excluded from Time Machine backups. Time Machine will attempt to backup any hard disk attached to your Mac, including secondary internal drives, that have not been added to Time Machines Exclusion list.
This includes the Time Machine backup drive ITSELF. Normally, Time Machine is set to exclude itself by default. But on rare occasions it can forget. When your backup begins, Time Machine mounts the backup on your desktop. (For Time Capsule users it appears as a white drive icon labeled something like “Backup of (your computer)”.) If, while it is mounted, it does not show up in the Time Machine Prefs “Do not back up” list, then Time Machine will attempt to back ITSELF up. If it is not listed while the drive is mounted, then you need to add it to the list.
*Recovering Backup Space*
If you have discovered that large unwanted files have been backed up, you can use the Time Machine “time travel” interface to recovered some of that space. Do NOT, however, delete files from a Time Machine backup disk by manually mounting the disk and dragging files to the trash. You can damage or destroy your original backups by this means.
Additionally, deleting files you no longer wish to keep on your Mac does not immediately remove such files from Time Machine backups. Once data has been removed from your Macs' hard disk it will remain in backups for some time until Time Machine determines that it has "expired". That's one of its’ benefits - it retains data you may have unintentionally deleted. But eventually that data is expunged. If, however, you need to remove backed up files immediately, do this:
Launch Time Machine from the Dock icon.
Initially, you are presented with a window labeled “Today (Now)”. This window represents the state of your Mac as it exists now. +DO NOT+ delete or make changes to files while you see “Today (Now)” at the bottom of the screen. Otherwise, you will be deleting files that exist "today" - not yesterday or last week.
Click on the window just behind “Today (Now)”. This represents the last successful backup and should display the date and time of this backup at the bottom of the screen.
Now, navigate to where the unwanted file resides. If it has been some time since you deleted the file from your Mac, you may need to go farther back in time to see the unwanted file. In that case, use the time scale on the right to choose a date prior to when you actually deleted the file from your Mac.
Highlight the file and click the Actions menu (Gear icon) from the toolbar.
Select “Delete all backups of <this file>”.
*Full Backup After Hardware Change/Replacement*
If you are running out of disk space sooner than expected it may be that Time Machine is ignoring previous backups and is trying to perform another full backup of your system? This will happen if you have replaced your computer with a new one, or had significant repair work done on your existing Mac. Time Machine will perform a new full backup. This is normal.
You have several options if Time Machine is unable to perform the new full backup:
A. Delete the old backups, and let Time Machine begin a fresh.
B. Attach another external hard disk and begin backups there, while keeping this current hard disk. After you are satisfied with the new backup set, you can later reformat the old hard disk and use it for other storage.
C. Ctrl-Click the Time Machine Dock icon and select "Browse Other Time Machine disks...". Then select the old backup set. Navigate to files/folders you don't really need backups of and go up to the Action menu ("Gear" icon) and select "Delete all backups of this file." If you delete enough useless stuff, you may be able to free up enough space for the new backup to take place. However, this method is not assured as it may not free up enough "contiguous space" for the new backup to take place.
*Outgrown Your Backup Disk?*
On the other hand, your computers drive contents may very well have outgrown the capacity of the Time Machine backup disk. It may be time to purchase a larger capacity hard drive for Time Machine backups. Alternatively, you can begin using the Time Machine Preferences exclusion list to prevent Time Machine from backing up unneeded files/folders.
Consider as well: Do you really need ALL that data on your primary hard disk? It sounds like you might need to Archive to a different hard disk anything that's is not of immediate importance. You see, Time Machine is not designed for archiving purposes, just as a backup of your local drive(s). In the event of disaster, it can get your system back to its' current state without having to reinstall everything. But if you need LONG TERM storage, then you need another drive that is removed from your normal everyday working environment.
This KB article discusses this scenario with some suggestions including Archiving the old backups and starting fresh [http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/15137.html]
Let us know if this clarifies things.
Cheers!

I manually deleted back-ups from Time Machine and now I can't empty the trash

I manually deleted back-ups from Time Machine and now I can't empty the trash.

Using Finder (deleting Time Machine backups) to manage Time Machine files is a mistake. The remedy is somewhat easy, but you will lose all the files on that TM drive.
If there is nothing elese on the Time Machine drive, try reformatting the drive with Disk Utility. This will effectively remove the files from that drive from the trash. If you have files on this drive, temporarily copy the files to another drive, then reformat the TM drive.

Time Machine Service - Run scripts after backup

I am running Mavericks Server (10.9.5), server version 3.2.2
The server is used as a backup destination for a lot of Macs, and I am trying to create a complementary service that keeps track of all of the incoming backups and logs all backup events.
Is there any way to have a script execute whenever the Time Machine service completes a backup, or for that matter, and way to tell when a backup is running or has completed?
The options I have thought of so far are:
1. Script that monitors the logs to look for appropriate events
2. Run script on timer that scans the backup folder and looks for new backups
Neither of these seems ideal to mean, so I was hoping someone might have a better idea.
Thoughts?

In order to back up the configuration and state of some services the server needs them to termporarily be turned off. This includes the backing up of Time Machine.
So in order to back up the Time Machine configuration and details about what computers it is backing up where, the server would need to turn off the Time Machine backup service. But if it's turned off, it can't use it to back things up.
Similarly, imagine you needed to restore the backup. To view the backups you would need the Time Machine backup service to be working. But you can't overwrite the configuration and status information of a service which is turned on, because that would confuse the process doing the serving. But if the process is turned off, you can't use it to restore the backup.
So do what Linc said: use the System Preferences panel to back the computer up, and don't back it up to the same device you're backing up its Time Machine clients to.

Macs + Time Machine + Server Time Machine

Hello all! I'm new to using OS X Server and have it all setup (I think) the right way. However, I wanted to ask if this is possible...
All the client machines at my business run OS X Leopard and use Time Machine to back up to a local external drive. Is it possible to have Time Machine also back up to the server using Leopard Server's Time Machine Client feature? Basically, each client would have a local backup and a server backup. Is this possible? If so, how do you set this up?

The OS X Server forums are here.

Home Office Server setup question: re Time Machine

I recently purchased a Mac Mini with OS X Server (10.6) for my home office. I also have an AEB.
I'm pondering two options for backing up via Time Machine
10.6 Server Managed Time Machine vs. AEB AirDisks
Option 1: Use AEB AirDisks and have all machines - including the server - backup to the time machine.
Option 2: Use Snow Leopard as the backup server. Connect the external drives to the Server and manage all backups there.
I'm thinking Option 2 because it coordinates with the Managed Workgroup and isn't using AirDisk access. But I'm not sure why I need to send all of the data through the server and impact its overall performance. Either way the traffic goes through the AEB so that's a moot point. And then again maybe the backup isn't a big deal for the server either.
Looking for recommendations.
FYI, my backup is a simple RAID 1 config.

I don;t believe TM will give you a complete backup of your server, as there are some files that change frequently, and some items that TM does not copy.
If you're looking for an automated solution, consider SuperDuper, CCC, or even an online service like Carbonite. There are other backup solutions as well if you google around but they may be overkill (and expensive) for your needs.

Time machine osx server backup to multiple drives?

Hello,
I've just discovered Time Machine for Mac OSx Server. It can act as a centralizad point for the backups of all the computers in the network, how cool!
I know that Time Machine "client" can back a system up to multiple drives. My question is, can I do something similar with Time Machine "server" so I can have more than one storage product onto which I can back up all the systems? That would be very interestin if I want to implement a off-site backup from all my systems.
I would love to hear your inputs.Thanks in advance,
Regards,

I don't know. If the TM preference pane is scriptable then you could do it with an AppleScript. Unfortunately, TM is not designed to also schedule different backup times. For example, assume you could automate drive switching, you still need to tell TM to backup to one drive at some time then backup to another drive at a different time.
I suppose the latter could be done via a cron job as long as you did not use TM preferences to turn TM on in which case it will backup each hour automatically.
It seems to me you'd be better off using a different backup utility that would allow you to schedule such backups. For example:
1. Retrospect Desktop (Commercial)
2. Synchronize! Pro X (Commercial)
3. Synk (Backup, Standard, or Pro)
4. Deja Vu (Shareware)
5. Carbon Copy Cloner (Donationware)
6. SuperDuper! (Commercial)
7. Intego Personal Backup (Commercial)
8. Data Backup (Commercial)
9. SilverKeeper 2.0 (Freeware)
10. Tri-Backup (Commercial)
Others may be found at VersionTracker or MacUpdate.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.
Not all of the above will backup over a network, but most can backup to any mounted device including a network drive except SuperDuper!.
In an enterprise setting your best choice of the above is Retrospect. There are a few other enterprise level backup utilities (costly) that you can track down at VersionTracker or MacUpdate. BRU is an example.
Oh, and if you know how to use the command line you can use the Unix tools, ditto and rsync.
Message was edited by: Kappy

Managing Time Machine clients

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