Can't Find SP3 ImageManager

Hi,

From what I downloaded I can't seem to find:

 

The image manager is a separate install from SP3. It also requires you to have Microsoft .net 2.0 installed. That's another download and install if you don't already have it. To get the install program for image manager, you need to download the big iso file, burn that to CD and insert it in your CD drive while windows is booted. It should autostart and present you with the options to install SPDT3 and as a completely separate install decision, the image manager. The CD you burn is also the WinPE/SP recovery CD and is bootable by itself.

Rod

 

Could you tell me why I might want to install this image manager app? What benefits does it bring and thanks?

Gary

 

Gary, I "think" Image Manager consolidates incremental back-ups / images.

I may be wring.

...screamer

 

Hi Guys,

So if you use 'continuous increments' without immagemanager (no collapse of increments into one) then just a bunch of increments could be on an ext. HDD? And still be capable of restoring. Is this correct?

I just want the one Full backup + increments till the ext HDD becomes full, then format the ext HDD, then start all over Full backup & increments. Now should my c: fail, using the full backup & any cherry picked increment, I'm back in business.

I'll gladly give up some of the bells & whistles imagemanager provides, if i can use one full backup then all increments.

Take Care
Rico

 

Hi Peter,

So imagemanager will get around the drawbacks you mention?

As an alternative, choosing 'monthly' would put 12 full backups + the associated incrementals. The ext HD would fill up fast, even faster by choosing 'weekly.'

What does this mean,

, or how?

Take Care
Rico

 

If i understand you right,you always have a base image + day by day one collapsed incremental,i mean after one month you have a base image + 30 or so incrementals[one incremental for each day]so with restore you can revert back to the day of your choice in this month ?

 

ImageManager is a feature that is mostly intended for the enterprise setting. However, if you wish to use it, feel free to do so.

It will automatically collapse all intra-daily incrementals (incrementals taken during a particular day) into a single "synthetic" daily incremental (I'm using the term "synthetic" to specify an incremental that's created by the ImageManager as it collapses existing incrementals together), and will auto-collapse all synthetic daily incrementals into a synthetic weekly, and synthetic weekly incrementals into synthetic monthly. Setting it up a policy in the ImageManager is a trivial thing. Just specify a directory that you want managed, and the time of day that you want it to use as the "end of day" and how many days of intra-dailies you want to keep even if they've already been collapses, and what it should do with older intra-dailies (move them into a subdirectory, or delete them for you).

A rule the ImageManager always follows is that if you have any incrementals for a given day, it will always collapse those to a daily incremental, and it will preserve that point in time indefinitely. In other words, you'll always have at least one point in time (the end-of-day point in time) for EVERY day, back to the base, even if your base was taken years ago.

One thing to keep in mind is that ImageManager will collapse images in a way such that when it collapses all of the incrementals for the last day into a single synthetic incremental, it will make sure that this new synthetic incremental is dependent upon the previous day's syntetic incremental, rather than the last product-generated incremental. It does the same for weekly and monthly synthetics - they'll be dependent upon a previous synthetic incremental. The reason this is important is that it ensures that the length of the image chain from any day back to the base is always short (minimizing the I/O required to mount/restore/verify a chain). So if trace the file dependencies back for any give day you'll find that a daily incremental is dependent upon the previous daily incremental ONLY back to the start of that given week, and at that point it's dependent upon the previous weekly incremental, which itself is dependent upon the previous weekly, to the start of the month, which is dependent upon the previous monthly incremental, and so forth back to the base. It makes for short chains.

In other words, rather than being dependent upon every single daily incremental, back to the base, the chain of dependencies jumps from depending on dailies, to depending on weeklies, to depending on monthlies.

 

Hi Guys,

Perhaps I should consider another backup strategy? First something Peter, mentioned (a few posts back) got me to wondering.

With TI 8 - 10 I made one full backup, then every Sunday I would make an increment, on my ext HD. About the end of 2006 my int. HD failed. I replaced it & restored using TI-10, the restore had many many errors, it would have been easier to format & re-install manually. Could the reason for the errors, have been the dependicies on so many increments?

I'm not useing this machine in any kind of business enviornment, and really don't need, daily backups. My most important file is my Quicken dat which, has its own backup mechanism. So I'm looking for an easy restore, from a diaster. So with TI (up until the restore failed, & the release of SP3) my strategy TI-10 is/was one full backup, then Sunday increments.

Should I look at another strategy?

Also I got stuck going to work today, & SP3 now says today's backup failed, how do i satisfy SP3?

Take Care
Rico