Gigasoft Data Backup

• GBM is designed so that the client software installed in the device does all the ‘heavy lifting’ required for backups. Nothing is done server-side, it is all client-side. This means that if the client device is constrained in any way by resources (low-power CPU, minimal RAM, low-quality LAN or switching equipment, slow internet speeds, etc), then this may have a harmful effect on the speed of any backups.
• Solution: 
  • Check the path of the Protected Item. The user may be trying to specify “Z:\ drive” which only exists for that user account. Change to a UNC path instead; or
  • Check the permissions for the client software. May need to create an account on the share that the client software backup.delegate service can use to ‘logon as’; or
  • Install the client software onto the device which holds the original data

Accessing Windows network shares and UNC paths 

GBM can back up Windows network paths, and back up to Windows network storage (SMB / CIFS). However, because GBM runs as a service user, there are some issues with authentication to be aware of.

Please note that if you are using GBM to back up data from a network device, you should prefer to install GBM directly on the device instead of backing it up over the network. This will also significantly improve performance, as less data needs to be transferred over the LAN.

Mapped network drives 

On Windows, each logged-on user session has its own set of mapped network drives. The service user account is unlikely to have any mapped drives. If you see error messages like WARNING Missing: 'Z:\', this is probably the reason. You can work around this by using a UNC path instead.

The GBM desktop application will automatically convert mapped network drives to their UNC path equivalents.

Authentication 

If the UNC share requires authentication, the service user account is probably not logged-in to the UNC share. If you see error messages like WARNING Lstat: CreateFile \\?\UNC\...: Access is denied., this is probably the reason.

GBM 18.6.5 and later have built-in options for setting Windows network authentication credentials.

For versions of GBM prior to 18.6.5, workarounds are available for both GBM Backup and GBM Server. Ranked in order of preference:

• If you are storing data on a UNC path, you can add this "Before" command on the Storage Vault instead of on the Protected Item. This will ensure it is run for all backup jobs going to that Storage Vault.

• For GBM, this is the Giasoft Backup (delegate service) service.
• If you are using GBM on a Windows Server machine that is acting as the Domain Controller, you must choose a domain account.