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I want to do an automatic daily system state backup of my 2012 R2 DC. I only want to keep the backups of the last 2 days.

There is one caveat: I want to backup to a network share (and via the wizard it only allows one version of my backup).

This should be possible via a scheduled task or something, no?

Thanks a lot for the help already!

Kind regards,

Jozef Woo
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  • `the wizard it only allows one version of my backup` - The wizard only allows that because the server backup software uses shadow copies on the destination volume to keep multiple versions. But that isn't supported on networks shares. There may be alternatives though. – Zoredache Apr 12 '17 at 18:33
  • Thanks for that extra info. In fact, the network share path is just referring to my local D drive. I know this is rather strange but it is because there is operating system data on the D drive as well and Windows Server Backup doesn't allow me to backup to such a drive unfortunately. I'm trying to force it however cuz I don't have another choice. – Jozef Woo Apr 12 '17 at 18:56
  • Haven't tested,this, but since it is on your local drive, try creating a VHD (disk management -> Action create vhd) on that D drive. Then target that VHD volume in server backup. – Zoredache Apr 12 '17 at 19:43

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I had some valuable comments from Zoredache (don't know how to give credit for that) but I finally managed to find a fairly elegant solution with the help of some others:

I created 2 shared folders on my D drive and I also created 2 scheduled tasks on alternating days with the following commands:

wbadmin start systemstatebackup -backupTarget:\server\DC_Backup\Backup_1 -quiet wbadmin start systemstatebackup -backupTarget:\server\DC_Backup\Backup_2 -quiet

So now I am able to backup to a disk that also contains operating/AD DB files and each system state backup will be kept for 2 days.

Perfect!

Jozef Woo
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