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I tried to find a way to do it, but I am not sure if it's possible or not.

Using Recovery services on Azure, I installed the Microsoft Azure Backup Agent on an IIS server.

We have multiple websites hosted and each website use ELMAH for logging. We also use SVN to deploy website update. The thing is, some of our log folder contains thousands of log files and there's also the .svn files which contains tons of files. I would like to exclude these folders, for performance purpose. However, I don't want to add one hundred manual exclusion list, I would like to add a generic filter to do so.

I know I can exclude a specific folder in the backup agent and that we can exclude certain file types, but I don't want to exclude all .xml files, for example, as they are important files to be backuped.

Did anyone find a way to exclude part of folder path from the Azure Backup Agent tool? It most likely apply to Windows Server Backup too. It's fine if I need to script a file with the exclusion listed in it too.

ie.

  • C:\inetpub\wwwroot\website\log\1.xml
  • C:\inetpub\wwwroot\website\log\2.xml

Exclude: C:\inetpub\wwwroot\*\log\*

Exclude: C:\inetpub\wwwroot\*\.svn\*

Thanks in advance!

P-L
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  • Perhaps an obvious question, but can you move the logs to somewhere else, away from the backup root? – proteus Dec 20 '14 at 20:45
  • In poking around at it I didn't see a way to do that, even if there was I'd still suggest moving the logs – Jim B Dec 20 '14 at 21:52
  • While we could move out the logs elsewhere as a work around, I don't think we can move out the .svn folders. Thanks for the suggestion. – P-L Dec 20 '14 at 23:59
  • Hi P-L (from quebec :D) We also try to configure azure backup to add "wildcard" exclusion, did you find a solution since last year? thank you! – foxontherock Aug 03 '15 at 18:50
  • Hi Frederic, yeah I should definitively change my profile picture! To answer your question, unfortunately no. I left that company since and didn't check back about the solution as we're using a different backup solution here. From what I remember, there was a new backup agent client being released, but I didn't have time to look at it. We might move to azure backup here too, so if anyone find a solution for this problem please share it here! – P-L Aug 05 '15 at 13:22

2 Answers2

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Just had a talk to a support engineer and he confirmed that it's currently not possible to use wildcards other than in file extensions.

I explained my use case and remarked that it was a useful feature.

Added a user voice item to track this, votes are welcome:

https://feedback.azure.com/forums/258995-azure-backup/suggestions/35201827-exclusions-based-on-minimatch-patterns

To work around it, at the moment the only option is to use powershell to search for folders to exclude and then update the backup schedule. Or to include updating the backup schedule as part of your deployment scripts/pipeline.

jessehouwing
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If you are talking about an Azure VM backup through the extension (full VSS backup) then I am not aware of a way to exclude files or folders. However, you can install the Agent for Windows Server or System Center Data Protection Manager or Windows Client like you would use for an on-premise machine in an Azure VM and configure it with just the files and folders you want to backup.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/backup-azure-backup-windows-server/

If you want to automate the process, you can script it with PowerShell using the following documentation:

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/backup-client-automation/

Keep in mind that this is a file/folder backup, so you wouldn't be able to use it to restore the entire VM. If you needed to restore an Azure VM using this method, you would need to build a new VM, install the agent, then perform the restore using the Recover to an alternate machine method described here.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/backup-azure-restore-windows-server/#recover-to-an-alternate-machine

learley
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