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How To Backup Windows Server 2016

This document provides a guide on how to install and configure the Windows Server Backup feature in Windows Server 2016 using PowerShell. It highlights the limitations of the built-in backup solution, such as the inability to retain multiple restore points when backing up to a network share. Additionally, it notes that backups are not encrypted by default, and suggests using Bitlocker for added security.

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5 views9 pages

How To Backup Windows Server 2016

This document provides a guide on how to install and configure the Windows Server Backup feature in Windows Server 2016 using PowerShell. It highlights the limitations of the built-in backup solution, such as the inability to retain multiple restore points when backing up to a network share. Additionally, it notes that backups are not encrypted by default, and suggests using Bitlocker for added security.

Uploaded by

abdul.bhai.hindustani.1984
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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How To Backup Windows Server 2016

Posted by Jarrod on September 29, 2016Leave a comment (16)Go to


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Here we’ll show you how to install the Windows Server Backup feature in
Windows Server 2016 with PowerShell and then configure basic server
backups.

We’ll also take a quick look at how the backup files are stored and see if they
are at all encrypted or not.

In order to perform simple backup and restores out of the box, Windows
Server 2016 provides the Windows Server Backup feature. While this does
work it is fairly basic and lacks many useful features, if you have many
critical servers to backup I highly recommend that you look at something
else such as Microsoft’s Data Protection Manager (DPM) or a third party
backup solution from some other vendor.

An example of this is that when you backup over the network to an external
share with Windows Server Backup you can only store one restore point at a
time, any further backups will overwrite existing ones which isn’t very useful
if you actually need some sort of retention. The backups are also managed
on a per server basis which makes them difficult to maintain and manage.

Install Windows Server Backup Feature

Before we can actually configure the backups, we must first install the
Windows Server Backup feature. This can be done through the graphical user
interface, however it’s just faster to simply use PowerShell.

First we’ll use the Get-WindowsFeature cmdlet to search for available


features that contain the string ‘*Backup*’ in the Name field.

PS C:\> Get-WindowsFeature -Name *Backup*


As we can see Windows-Server-Backup is available for install but not
currently installed.

Next we use the Install-WindowsFeature cmdlet to install the Windows-


Server-Backup feature, as shown below.

PS C:\> Install-WindowsFeature -Name Windows-Server-Backup

Once complete we should see that the installation has completed


successfully, no reboot is required for this feature, we can begin using it
straight away.

Configure Backups

Now that we have installed the Windows Server Backup feature, we can
begin to configure our server backups. To begin we’re going to open the
Windows Server Backup console from the Tools menu in Server Manager as
shown below.
From the wbadmin window that opens up, select “Local Backup” from the
menu on the left. We will see that there is a warning noting that no backup
has been configured for this computer, which is currently expected. We can
either configure a backup schedule which will perform the backup as we
define, or we can perform a once off backup. Here we’ll setup a backup
schedule, by clicking “Backup Schedule” on the right.
This will open up a Getting Started window advising that we can use this
wizard to configure a regular backup schedule for the full server, system
state, selected files, folders or entire volumes – click Next to proceed.

On the next Select Backup Configuration window we can select if we want to


perform a full server backup which is the recommended and default action,
or we can optionally select custom to pick specific volumes or files that we
want to backup rather than the full server. In this example we will be
configuring a full server backup, however you can change this to suit your
requirements.

The next window allows us to specify the time the backup should run. We
can set the backup to run once daily at a specified time, or we can optionally
have it run multiple times per day by selecting the more than once a day
option and adding the times the backup should run to the right side.
Next we will be asked to specify the destination of our backup data. The
recommended option is to store the data on a separate disk that is attached
to the server, however we can also change this to backup to another volume,
or a network share. In this example I’ll be using a network share as I have
one available, however note that there is a limitation of this, we will only be
able to store one backup point at a time as new backups will overwrite the
existing one. This limitation does not exist when you backup to another disk
or volume.

We will now specify the network location, here I pick a file share that is
available on the local network and click Next to continue. If you selected a
disk or volume destination rather than network, you would instead be asked
to pick that disk or volume here.
Finally we are presented with a confirmation screen which will summarize
our options, click the Finish button to complete the process and accept this,
or otherwise go back and make any changes as needed. The summary notes
that as we are performing a full backup, we will be able to perform bare
metal recovery of the entire system which is fairly powerful.
That’s it, the backup should automatically start at the time specified. We can
manually initiate it by going back to the Windows Server Backup window and
selecting “Backup Once”. From here we are given the option to create a once
off backup based off of our scheduled backup, so all of the same settings will
be used but we will be running the backup now rather than at the scheduled
time.

Are Windows Server Backups Encrypted?

This is a common question that I’ve seen asked a few times, so I thought I’d
take the opportunity to answer it here. No, by default backups in Windows
Server 2016 (and previous versions for that matter) are not encrypted. We
can confirm this by simply browsing to the location that we have specified to
backup the data to and look through it. Primarily a .vhdx file is created for
the C:\ drive of the server, which we can easily mount through disk manager,
assign a drive letter to and then browse through the files and folders.

To encrypt the backup files we could setup Bitlocker on the disks where the
backups are being stored, however note that this only protects the data at
rest. If the data can be accessed while the drive is available for the backup
to work, it could also be read by any potential attacker during this time.

Summary

We have shown you how to install the Windows Server Backup feature in
Windows Server 2016 using PowerShell, and then configure a basic backup
schedule to a network share.

We also then confirmed that the backup files are not encrypted, so additional
steps should be taken to protect them.

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