Understanding OS X Server and Time Machine backups

Never used Time Machine with OS X Server before. What happens if you use Time Machine to backup the server itself? Is it reasonable to expect TM to back up the Users directory, and any user homes that are set up, as well as the server's system, libs, etc? Or should users (even those with Network Home Folders) be expected to run Time Machine when they log in...recursively backing up to the the server they're logged into?
If we back up the server itself with Time Machine then, I'd assume, users wouldn't be able to use TM to recover files from their home folder on their own...but an admin could do it from the server!?!
Anyone with experience with this shed any light on best practice here? Makes my head hurt just thinking about it.

Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Click the Clear Display icon in the toolbar. Then try the action that you're having trouble with again. Select any messages that appear in the Console window. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.
When posting a log extract, be selective. In most cases, a few dozen lines are more than enough.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Important: Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

Similar Messages

SL Server and Time Machine - Backups never finish - help.

I am running Snow Leopard Server (10.6.4) on a Mini. I want to use Time Machine to back it up to an external hard drive. This setup worked forever, until I upgraded to Snow Leopard.
Now, the backups start, but never finish. There is no consistency to this - sometimes it gets far into the backup, and other times if stops early. In other words, there is not one file that is causing this problem. The only consistent thing is, is never finishes.
I’ve tried to use an old sparsebundle, and I’ve erased the HD completely to start over. I’ve excluded files, folders, and groups of folders, and it never completes.
The alert I get usually says, “The backup was not performed because an error occurred while copying files to the backup disk. The problem may be temporary. Try again later to back up. If the problem persists, use Disk Utility to repair your backup disk.”
Needless to say, I’ve followed these instructions - waited (six months now), used a Time Capsule instead, used another HD instead, repaired the HD, everything. It just doesn’t work.
Anyone else have this problem? Any ideas on how to fix it?
Thanks.

I'm having the same problem. I can't use Time Machine at all on Snow Leopard Server on an Xserve. There are 2 1TB drives configured as a mirrored RAID set, and a 3rd internal 1TB drive set up to run as a Time Machine backup drive. I have not had any luck after almost a year of trying to get this to work, and I am finding no help on the Internet. I've seen the question asked, but it is never answered. Does ANYBODY out there have an clues as to why this keeps happening? Is it about permissions, since these files are being served from the sharepoint? If I exclude everything but one or two files, the process works, so it's not a hardware error, as far as I can tell. Can't I get TM to bypass any problem files and log them to a report? There are thousands of files. I can't exclude them one by one. I'm already very old.

Can Synology NAS serve both time machine backup and video/audio servers?

I'm looking for a NAS box such as Synology 2 bay solution. I've seen the box can be used as Samba server to store network folders and files; and also there is discussions on Mac Time Machine backup using the Synology boxes; I'm wonder if the RAID disks can be partitioned to do both, some space for the backup from time machine and others with regular NAS services as network disk space, and if you can share your experience if you have done that.

Your answer is found on the Synology website with this link:
http://www.synology.com/en-global/support/tutorials/481

SL Server and Time Machine Mail backups

Hello all
We've recently taken on a client who previously used a SL Server for their mail. Unfortunately their previous IT guys have taken away the server and wiped it now. All we have is a hard drive with the Time Machine backups on it.
Our client is now using a Windows Exchange server for email and I was wondering if there's anyway we can extract the individual emails for the users from the time machine backup so we can convert/migrate them into the exchange accounts.
Failing that, does anyone know where the location for the specific emails are on the Time Machine backups?

I'm having the same problem. I can't use Time Machine at all on Snow Leopard Server on an Xserve. There are 2 1TB drives configured as a mirrored RAID set, and a 3rd internal 1TB drive set up to run as a Time Machine backup drive. I have not had any luck after almost a year of trying to get this to work, and I am finding no help on the Internet. I've seen the question asked, but it is never answered. Does ANYBODY out there have an clues as to why this keeps happening? Is it about permissions, since these files are being served from the sharepoint? If I exclude everything but one or two files, the process works, so it's not a hardware error, as far as I can tell. Can't I get TM to bypass any problem files and log them to a report? There are thousands of files. I can't exclude them one by one. I'm already very old.

I'm having a hard time setting up my external hard from with my AirPort Extreme and Time Machine Backups.

I have been using a Mac Mini with an external hard and Time Machine. I bought an Airport Extreme and have had problem setting up the hard drive using the USB port on the Airport Extreme. I also just recently bought a Mac Book Air and hope to have both computers back up to the external hard drive using Time Machine and Airport Extreme. I have been using the optical drive from the Mac mini to load programs into the Mac Book Air. I think I'm just getting confused in Finder. I am just not seeing the hard drive. I ended up plugging the hard drive back into the Mac Mini and that is work fine again. How do I setting the external hard drive up to the AirPort Extreme and use for both computers? Or at least to start with the Mac mini.

It's critical to understand that Time Machine (TM) stores backups differently between local and network drives. That would mean the TM backup on your locally attached USB hard drive will not be directly useable when it is connected to the AirPort Extreme Base Station (AEBS). There is a way to copy a local version to a network version, but it is not fool-proof. When you do connect this drive and point TM to it, TM will start a brand new backup, leaving your existing backup as is.
If your current backup is critical to you, you may want to consider getting a second USB drive to attach to the Extreme and use your existing one as a backup ... or use TM's multi-backup process to backup to more than one destination drive alternatively.
So, at this point, you may want to make a decision on how you want to go forward to help provide a solution for you.
To directly answer your question, when you go to select a destination for a Time Machine backup, the drive(s) that show up under "Backup Disks" are those that TM already recognizes and has backed up to. Those listed under "Available Disks" are drives (either local or on the network) that TM can back up to.

Problem migrating to new Mac mini Server from Time Machine Backup

I sell my old Mac mini Server and after I purchase the new one (unibody). I had the Time Machine Backup but I'm not able to restore it to the new mac mini. I started it with the Server Install DVD into it and I went to Utility menu to choose "*Restore from Time Machine backup*" but it said that *it was not possible to restore the backup to this machine because its a different hardware, and suggested to use Migration*. So I restarted it and when it asked me to choose between "setting up a new server" or "transfer information from an existing server" I chose this last. In the next menu didn't appear any Time Machine backups so I mounted the time machine backup and copied the Latest hd backup to an external firewire hd and I connected it to the new one. In the migration menu list appeared my backup but there was a *yellow triangle icon* over it and the message "*Migration is not supported from servers which are configured to use dynamic network addresses. Configure the source system to have a manual network address and try again*". But how can I config a static address into my backup if I can't restore it into a machine? I don't have anymore the old mac mini to restore the backup and make any change in the configuration!
Any one can please help or give me suggestions?
Many thanks

I solved it!
I changed the network settings by editing /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist
So I successfully restored my SL server installation, but now I have an issue with Ethernet and SD reader. See this post if you are interested:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=11709463#11709463

OS X Server and time machine

I have installed OS X server and am running Mavericks. I am trying to use the time machine feature in the server to centrally backup two iMacs. The machines are backing up and are showing in the server backups window. However, when I try to access time machine for one of the computers, it aborts the open process and gives me the message "Can't connect to a current Time Machine backup disk." This happens on both computers.
Also, I can see that the machines have file sizes listed in the "Backups" pane, but the "Settings" pane displays Zero KB for time machine storage.

Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Click the Clear Display icon in the toolbar. Then try the action that you're having trouble with again. Select any messages that appear in the Console window. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.
When posting a log extract, be selective. In most cases, a few dozen lines are more than enough.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Important: Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

Problems with Airport Extreme Firmware 7.6.1. and Time Machine Backups to USB Disks

I found that when I upgraded to Firmware 7.6.1 my Airport Extreme was no longer able to maintain afp server connections to USB disks mounted to the APE. If I power cycled the APE it would work for a while and then fail again. This even applied for connectins on gigabit ethernet, not just wifi. Consequently my Time Machine backups became unusable. Rolling back to 7.6 fixed it, but I permanently fixed this by changing the IPv6 mode from "Automatic" to "Host". No problems since then.

I hate to have to tell you this, but backing-up that way is unreliable and not supported by Apple. See: Using Time Machine with an Airport Extreme Air Disk.

Upgraded to Mavericks and time machine backups keep failing.

I upgraded to Mavericks a few days ago and now I find my time machine backups keep failing. I first tried turning off the power to the time machine then turning it on again and I managed to get one complete backup but that took over 20 hours to complete.
The time machine backup mode never seems to get beyond " preparing backup" then showing the message "backing up failed, disc already in use"
The time machine backup worked fine before I upgraded, is there a way round this problem or will I have to go through reloading the time machine as if it were a new piece of equipment?
My wife's iMac is still on mountain lion 10.8.5 and the backups on the same Time Machine work fine.
Any help would be gratefully received
Greg

Hi,
I have exactly the same problem.
MBP 2011 running 10.9 named "ebook"
MacMini running 10.8.5 server with TM share
everything works fine UNTIL for some reason the MBP is interrupted during a TM backup ...
After that I get the disk already in use error !
Rebooting the MBP wont help, but I narrowed the problem down ...
Looking on the Mini server I noticed :
- the TM backup user stays connected over AFP, even after several hours of inactivity and a couple of reboots of the MBP. Killing the AFP connection works, But problem stil continues !
- looking on the MBP with "lsof | grep ebook" showed me that the SparseBundles were still in use by the AFP process ... Using the Server control panel and restarting AFP solved that ...
After restarting the AFP process the remote TM Backup started to work again !
A couple of days later, the same problem occurred again, fixed it by this work around ...
I hope there will be a more permanent solotiun for this !

Combine fresh system install and Time Machine Backup

Hi all !
There´s a question that´s more generally Leopard and Snow Leopard related:
In trying to find causes of a system slowdown I decided to go for a complete fresh system install. BUT I also want to use my data saved in the time machine backup without spoiling the freshly created system folder.
I also want to update the system to the current OS version before restoring from BU.
Is there a way to keep the fresh system folder deriving from a fresh installation and just replace the rest of the data (that´s not present yet) with the time machine backup ?
I think the handy command "Restore System from Backup" from the OSX system installer wouldnt be a good idea. It would copy ALL the files from the backup, and would overwrite my fresh system folder, so that I´ll end up with the same old, probably faulty system.
Could the migration tool do the job ?
Thanks for your knowledge !

habschi2 wrote:
In trying to find causes of a system slowdown I decided to go for a complete fresh system install. BUT I also want to use my data saved in the time machine >backup without spoiling the freshly created system folder.
You should be able to migrate, for example, just your data using TM. But, TM is a bit unpredictable. Why not make a bootable clone of your internal on an external. It would serve fail-safe purposes, migrations purposes, and data-backup purposes. At the end of your install, you could, as groups only, migrate your data, users, settings, and apps--using your discretion. I would migrate only my data and my settings.
Is there a way to keep the fresh system folder deriving from a fresh installation and just replace the rest of the data (that´s not present yet) with >the time machine backup ?
See above.
I think the handy command "Restore System from Backup" from the OSX system installer wouldnt be a good idea. It would copy ALL the files from the backup, and would overwrite my fresh system folder, so that I´ll end up with the same >old, probably faulty system.
Absolutely correct.
Could the migration tool do the job ?
You can use Migration Assistant with TM, but I have never done so. So, I can't advise. The clone I mentioned takes care of all you issues in a very straight forward manner without dealing with the confusion of TM and MA that can arise.
(8878)

Question about HP MediaSmart Server and Time Machine

I just got an EX490 MediaSmart server to use for backups and as a media server. I set up the server to serve as a Time Machine backup device, and it seems to work fine. However, when the server is connected and appears as a Share in the Finder, if I use the Finder to navigate to the "Mac" folder on the server, I don't see any files inside. Actually I searched through all visible files on the server and didn't see any files that might be a backup file. I tried turning on Invisible file viewing but that didn't make any difference. I'm assuming that the Time Machine backup file on the server is somehow hidden from viewing.
Does anyone know why the backup file isn't appearing?
Thanks.

I have been looking at similiar HP NAS model, which now appears to have beome a prior model -
HP EX485 MediaSmart Home Server
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001OI2ZG4/
The prices have gone up slightly, too. The reviews on the above EX485 were almost like a mini review and informative. I assume you've created accounts and perhaps have (need?) a PC to configure Windows Home Server R2 fully? I was waiting for full Windows 7 support which is still in beta.
From what I read, one of the "Missing Bible" for WHS or something helps to get the most out of it and help with setup (though generally that just takes 15 minutes if you know how).

Leopard, Leopard server, and time machine.

Okay. First of all, I spent about 30 minutes searching through all the time machine questions here and found nothing like it so I'm sorry if its a duplicate question, but it does seem rather unique.
I have an XServe G5 running leopard server with an 8TB external firewire 800 RAID array that was purpose purchased to act as a time machine backup destination for about 8 machines.
XServe has that drive set up to be the backup destination, everything there is OK.
Here is what happens on the OSX Leopard machines when I go to backup:
1. I open Time Machine preferences.
2. I click on the "Choose Backup Disk..." button.
3. It thinks for about 10 seconds
4. It brings up a list of about 3 possible destinations. I select the one I want "Backups (XServe G5)"
5. I press the gleaming "Use For Backup" Button.
6. It asks for the users name and password. Type away.
7. It comes back to the 'Time Machine Preferences" window. The little on/off switch turned off, and we're back at the "Choose Backup Disk...." button.
This occurs on each machine I wish to backup, be they Mac Pros, or macbooks.
Help?

Ladies and gentlemen, I have the answer.
I stumbled across this accidentally when I was playing desperately in the Finder trying to get some inspiration about this issue.
The problem doesn't lie in the clients... it lies in the Server.
Here is my solution:
1. In the finder, right-click on the external drive, and select "Get Info".
2. Under "General", there should be 2 little check boxes, "Shared Folder" and "Locked".
3. Click on "Shared Folder" to put an X in it.
Thats it!
For some reason Time Machine setup didn't share the folder and so the client machines recognised it as a shared time machine backup source, but couldn't actually find it on the network because it wasn't shared.
Have fun ladies and gentlemen!!

Iphoto library and time machine backup on a same drive ?

Hi
I want to free up some space on my MBP so I am planning to move my iphoto library from MBP to an external hard drive. Can I also use the same external drive to keep Time Machine backups ? In short if I buy a large size external drive can I use it as a TM backup drive and also as iphoto library home location ? Or do I have to keep two separate external drives...one for TM and the other for iphoto library.
Thanks
Mandar

Yes, you can, but I wouldn't recommend it. Should your backup drive fail then you not only lose your Time Machine backups but you will also lose your iPhoto Library. But if you put each on two different drives then you lose none. If the iPhoto drive fails your library is still backed up on the Time Machine backup drive. If you lose the Time Machine drive then you lose a backup that can be easily recreated, but you still have the iPhoto drive. Two drives is a much better strategy. Always keep backups separate from all other external drive uses.

Can I clone and time machine backup on the same external drive?

I recently purchased a WD 2 TB external usb drive. I want to make sure that I have good backups in case my Macbook decides to give up on me. Should I clone a copy of HD or just time machine backup? Can i do both on one external hd?

RobCob wrote:
I'm honestly only concerned about my photos and music.
You can Manually Backup your iPhoto Library and your iTunes Library to an External Drive without addition Software.
How to correctly move your media:
iTunes: How to move the library to an EHD
Early iPhoto: How to move the Library to an EHD
iPhoto '11: Move your iPhoto library to a new location
iMovie: How to move the Library to an EHD
It is important that the External Hard Drive is formatted as Mac OS Extended (journaled).

Using external hard drive as both a boot drive and time machine backup

My internal 1TB hard drive on my iMac is dead and I don't have the money to replace it at the moment.
I have everything backed up on an external 1TB drive using Time Machine. As a workaround for the time being,
Is there any way I can install the system on the external drive and use that as the boot drive without erasing the Time Machine
Backups? It seems to me I would have to have two partitions for the external drive, one for the system, and
one for Time Machine. But is there any way to add a partition without erasing the existing one with
Time Machine only on it?
Sorry if line breaks here are weird. Doing this from iPhone.

Neil , I have a mid 2010 27" imac running 10.6.8 and i want to install Lion , when i purchase Lion from app store will it give me any install options as I would like to be able to dual boot using SL and Lion , I have 500 gigs left on my 1 tb drive (should I do this) or would I be better of using an external bootable drive as I also want to use Ubuntu and or Linux down the line.
Any and all support , help and advice will be appreciated.
If you would like to e-mail me you can find it on my profile page.
Thanks

Understanding OS X Server and Time Machine backups

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