Overview

Kerio Connect provides a built-in automated backup system for safely storing user mailbox and server configuration data. Admins can define a backup schedule based on their individual needs using either Full or Differential backups. The backup system allows the configuration of backup rotation for complete backups and the split backup size, to help manage the total data footprint for stored data.

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Information

1. Backup Configuration
   1. Backup Archives
2. Backup Data Recovery
   1. KMSRecover
   2. Manual Recovery
   3. Server Migration

Backup Configuration

The Backup Scheduling system provides two main types of backups - Full Backups which contain all of the files and configuration files and Differential backups which contain all of the content that has changed since the last Full Backup. You can schedule any number of full and differential backups depending on the datastore size (affects the time of backup completion) and the Importance of the data (more frequent backups schedule prevents data loss). 

The following content is contained within the Backups:

• User mailboxes
  • Note: Temporarily disabled users are not included in the backups.
• Public folders
• Mailing lists
• Configuration files
• Licenses
• SSL certificates
• SpamAssassin database

The default schedule performs a full backup on Sunday morning and differential backups each day of the week. Administrators can adjust this schedule based on the usage patterns of their environment. Any removable or network disk can be used for storing backups, but it is recommended to choose a location that is on a separate physical storage volume from your message store.

Backup Archives

Each backup archive (ZIP) filename consists of the backup type abbreviation and the date when it was created. The names of each backup designate both the type of backup and the DateTime when the backup was initiated. There are three main types of backups categorized within the built-in Backup System:

• Full Backups - Designated by "F."
• Differential Backups - Designated by "D."
• Backup Copy/Manual Backup - Designated by "C."

Example Backup Filename: F20120118T220007Z.zip

• F — Full backup
• 2012 — year
• 01 — month
• 18 — day
• T220007Z — GMT timestamp (22:00:07); always starts with T and ends with Z.

All backup archives will contain the following files and directories, although their contents will vary. For example, Differential backups may only contain a small subset of the content, as it only captures the changes since the last Full backup.

Manual Backup of Configuration Files (excluding store folder)

The Kerio Connect backups generated via the admin UI will contain both the store data (mails) and the config files. There is no built-in way to backup just the configuration separately from the message store.

However, you can always manually backup the main files and folders that are keeping the Kerio Connect configuration. These files and folders can be gathered from the Kerio Connect installation directory. Below are the files and folders holding the entire Kerio Connect configuration, which you can manually backup:

•  mailserver.cfg, users.cfg, and config_1.db.
  • config_1.db is found in the settings subfolder
• The following folders (along with their contents) contain key configurations:
  • license
  • settings
  • sslca
  • sslcert
• Store these files and folders somewhere safe and secure.

Backup Data Recovery

Due to the open nature of Kerio Connects Backups, users have a number of options available for recovering data. Most commonly, admins will leverage the built-in utility called KMSRecover. The tool is designed to simplify the data recovery process by automating the selection and migration of the backup contents. Alternatively, the backup contents can be manually merged back into the mail store, as the contents are stored in the same raw .eml format that is used by the mail server.

KMSRecover

KMSRecover provides a number of advanced recovery options that can be used to target specific users, mailboxes, configuration items, and more. These can then be placed into specific target locations directly from the command line. It should be noted that KMS Recover is not designed to "merge" content from the backups into the existing mail store, but rather replaces all of the existing content with the backed up data. For this reason, Admins should weigh their options when considering the available data recovery options.

While KMSRecover is available on all of the supported OS, you can reference the following based on your Host OS to explore some of the most common recovery options:

• Examples of Data Recovery on Microsoft Windows
• Examples of Data Recovery on Linux
• Data Recovery on Mac OS X

Manual Data Recovery

KMSRecover was developed as a companion to the built-in backup solution, however, some prefer to leverage their own backup utilities. Those admins can manually merge content into the mail store due to the open format of Kerio Connect's mail store. So long as the backed-up content is stored in the raw .eml format, it can be easily dragged into the appropriate #msgs folder for a mailbox. Once moved, the new messages can be indexed into the system via the Web Admin.

Server Migration

Migrating the Kerio Connect instance from one server to another can be considered as a two-part operation involving first making a backup of the old server and then restoring the backup file to the new server instance.

Detailed instructions for performing this through KMSRecover as well as through the Manual Data Recovery process are stated in the article Kerio Connect system migration to another server.