Guest processing in the BDRCloud Server is a feature that ensures consistent backups. By leveraging guest processing, you can capture application-aware backups, perform log truncations and file exclusions.

You can enable the guest processing settings for the added Windows machine by selecting the checkbox corresponding to the machines. After which you will be able to perform the edit.

• You can configure Application-Aware Settings. This feature provides data consistency for the applications (MS Exchange Server, MS SQL Server, MS SharePoint Server, MS Active Directory).
• During the backup process, the writers that are available will be checked if they are stable or not. Only if they are in a stable state the backup will proceed. This ensures a consistent database snapshot. A consistent database snapshot will be created by quiescing the applications using Microsoft VSS API.

Note: By default, Application-Aware Settings will be disabled

Enabling Application Aware processing option gives you two choices:

• Require successful application processing : Choosing this option lets BDRCloud Server track the application consistency and triggers the backup process, only when all the VSS writers are in a stable state. You can stop the backup if any of the application writers say for Example MS SQL writer is not in a stable state or if the VSS writers were not processed successfully after the snapshot.
• Ignore application processing failures: This option, lets BDRCloud Server trigger the backup job when it is scheduled, despite the success/failure of the application processed. It will not process the Application VSS writers and ignores the writer’s status. By default, we do not recommend this option as it may lead to data inconsistency of the applications in the backup.
• Disable Application-Aware Processing: The backup will proceed without transaction consistency of the applications.

Note: If any applications are running and you have selected the “Ignore application processing failures” option, then the application in the backup might not be consistent while restoring

Log Truncation

Enabling this option lets BDRCloud Server truncate the Exchange Server logs It purges and commits log files along with the .edb files. This avoids the disk space consumed by the application transaction logs. You can choose when to initiate this process by choosing one of the following options:

• Truncate the transaction logs – Choosing this option lets BDRCloud Server truncate the Exchange & SQL Server logs after successful completion of the backup process.

• Do not Truncate Logs – Choosing this option lets BDRCloud Server disable the truncation of the Exchange & SQL Server logs.

Note: It is recommended to enable the truncate logs option. Since the continuous growth of transactional logs leads to rapid consumption of storage space and the database modifications seems difficult when more log data is in the disk space on your drive

File Exclusion

This option allows you to exclude system files that can be restored later using an installation CD/DVD that comes with your machine. Some of the excluded system files are as follows: io. sys, config.sys, msdos.sys, pagefile.sys, hiberfil.sys, swapfile.sys, autoexec.bat, boot.ini, ntdetect.com, bootmgr, ntldr, etc.

Note: Exclude system files will be enabled by default, you can disable them if required.