Protected Systems¶

The Protected Systems page shows you a list of all the systems that are being backed up by all of your Slide Boxes. Clicking on them will lead you to the sidebar for each protected system, where you can see and manage your agent configuration.

The main list of Slide Agents shows the following information:

• An Online Indicator to show if the Slide Agent is connected to the Slide Cloud and its associated Slide Box. The indicator should be green () if the agent is connected to both, orange () if it is connected to one of them, or was recently disconnected, and red () if it is not connected. Check the network requirements for more information.
• The Name of your Slide Agent, which is either the hostname (default), or a nickname you've given it in the settings.
• The Device this agent is paired with, and protected by. Clicking on it will open the sidebar for the Slide Box.
• The Version of your Slide Agent software. The software is updated automatically, but you'll be able to see if the software is out-of-date.
• The IP Address of the Slide Agent, which can be useful for troubleshooting network issues.
• The last 10 Backup Attempts, showing successful and failed backup attempts. Clicking on the row will take you to the sidebar, which shows details about all backup attempts.
• The Last Backup date and time, indicating the start time of the last successful backup, as well as if the backup verification was successful (green checkmark). All successful backups are available for restore.
• The Last Cloud Backup date and time, indicating the last snapshot that was replicated to the Slide Cloud.
• The Status of the Slide Agent, which can be one of the following:
  • No issues: Agent is connected, taking backups and replicating properly.
  • Offline for ...: Agent is not connected to the Slide Cloud or Slide Box. Check the network connection and the network requirements.
  • Cloud replica behind: The Slide Agent is not replicating to the Slide Cloud. This can be due to network bandwidth issues (most likely), or the Slide Box being offline.
  • Backups paused: Backups are paused for this agent. This can be changed in the settings.
  • X alerts: Your Box has alerts that need attention. Click on the Box to see more details, and refer to the alerting page for details about each alert.

Searching & Filtering¶

The list of agents can be searched and filtered, so you can easily find the agent you are looking for. You can search by the agent name, and filter by Slide Box, or even paused agents:

Agent Details¶

If you click on a Slide Agent, you'll see details about it in the sidebar. This includes some of the same information you see in the list as well as some additional information, such as the last seen time, Windows version, and firmware type.

The sidebar also shows:

• The last 10 Backup Attempts, including potential error messages if a backup has failed.
• Recent Snapshots, which are all successful backups.
• Storage Details and History for this agent, both locally on the Slide Box and for the Slide Cloud.

For each of the successful backups, which you can see in the Recent Snapshots list, you'll see whether it is available locally and/or in the Slide Cloud, as well as a three-dot-menu to create restores. Please refer to the Restores documentation for more information on how to restore backups.

When a backup is in progress, you'll see a progress bar at the top of the sidebar, showing the progress of the current backup:

Cloud Replication¶

Each Slide Box replicates all successful backups for all protected systems to the Slide Cloud, so you can restore your data even if the Slide Box is destroyed. As of today, Slide Cloud replication is not configurable.

Each successful backup, aka snapshot, is kept locally and in the Slide Cloud based on the snapshot retention policy.

Alerts¶

Similar to Slide Box Alerts, Slide Agents may have alerts that need attention. Clicking on the See All link will show you the details of the alerts, and how to resolve them.

As of today, Slide Agents can have the following alerts:

• Agent Backup Failed: A backup attempt has failed.
• Agent Not Checking In: The agent has not checked in with the Slide Cloud for a while.
• Scheduled backup did not run as planned: A backup did not occur as scheduled, e.g. because the agent was offline, a backup failed, or because a previous backup was taking too long (most common).

Please see Alerting for more information on how to resolve these alerts. You can configure whether to receive email notifications for a particular type of alert in your account settings.

Settings¶

Navigating to the Settings tab in the sidebar will show you the settings for this Slide Agent. Here you can change the agent name, the backup schedule, and the retention policy for snapshots. You can also pause and resume backups, and delete the agent from the Slide Box.

Agent Name¶

The Agent section lets you pick a display name for the agent, which is shown in the Slide Agent list.

You can also write a comment for this agent, which can be useful for troubleshooting or identifying unique characteristics of this agent, e.g. underpowered hardware or hypervisor location.

Please note that it is not possible to change the hostname of an agent. This has to be done on the protected system itself.

Pause Backups¶

Pausing an agent will stop all backups for this agent. This can be useful if you are doing maintenance on the agent, or if you are running out of space on the Slide Box. You can resume backups at any time.

You can either temporarily pause an agent for 30 minutes, one hour, 2 hours, 4 hours, 8 hours, one day, one week, or pause it indefinitely.

Pausing the agent will also disable the Scheduled backup did not run as planned alert for the duration of the pause. See Alerting for more information on how to configure alerts.

Schedule Backups¶

This section lets you configure the backup schedule for the protected system.

You can choose the following parameters of a backup schedule:

• Backup Interval: You can choose between every 30 minutes, every hour, every 2 hours, 3 hours, or 6 hours. This defaults to once an hour.
• Time Window: You can choose the time window when the backup should run. This is useful if you want to avoid running backups during peak hours. This defaults to 9am-6pm (relative to the agent's timezone).
• Days of the Week: You can choose the days of the week when the backup should run. This defaults to every day of the week.
• Timezone: The timezone of the Slide Agent, which is used to schedule the backups. This defaults to the timezone of the protected system, but you can override it here.

By default, backups are scheduled to run every hour, between 9am-6pm, every day of the week. This is the recommended setting for most systems, as it ensures that you have the most recent backup available in case of a disaster.

Snapshot Retention¶

Snapshot retention refers to the process that determines how long snapshots (successful point-in-time backups) are kept before they are automatically deleted. This is important for managing storage on a Slide Box and ensuring that old snapshots do not consume unnecessary space. You can configure the retention policy for your Slide Box in the settings:

The snapshot retention process runs locally on your Slide Box, and in the Slide Cloud (see how it works). While you can manually configure the policy for your Slide Box, the policy for the Slide Cloud is dictated by the type of service you purchased with your Slide Box.

Policies¶

On the Slide Box, we currently offer the following retention policies:

• Balanced (default): Keep all snapshots for 24 hours. One daily snapshot per day for 7 days. One weekly snapshot per week for 4 weeks. One monthly snapshot per month for 12 months. One yearly snapshot per year for 7 years.
• Comprehensive (keep most amount of snapshots): Keep all snapshots for 48 hours. One daily snapshot per day for 14 days. One weekly snapshot per week for 8 weeks. One monthly snapshot per month for 12 months. One yearly snapshot per year for 7 years.
• Aggressive (keep the least amount of snapshots): Keep all snapshots for 6 hours. One daily snapshot per day for 2 days. One weekly snapshot per week for 2 weeks. One monthly snapshot per month for 2 months. One yearly snapshot per year for 1 year.

In the Cloud, the following policies exist, and are based on the service you purchased. They are based on the Balanced policy, but with different yearly periods:

• 1 Year Cloud Retention: Keep all snapshots for 24 hours. One daily snapshot per day for 7 days. One weekly snapshot per week for 4 weeks. One monthly snapshot per month for 12 months. One yearly snapshot per year for 1 year.
• 3 Year Cloud Retention: Keep all snapshots for 24 hours. One daily snapshot per day for 7 days. One weekly snapshot per week for 4 weeks. One monthly snapshot per month for 12 months. One yearly snapshot per year for 3 years.
• 7 Year Cloud Retention: Keep all snapshots for 24 hours. One daily snapshot per day for 7 days. One weekly snapshot per week for 4 weeks. One monthly snapshot per month for 12 months. One yearly snapshot per year for 7 years.

How it works¶

Retention is the process of deleting old snapshots based on the policy you've chosen.

For each Slide Agent, retention is run for snapshots on your Slide Box as well as for snapshots in the Slide Cloud. For each location, the retention process determines the "snapshots to keep" based on the policy or other circumstances, and deletes all other snapshots.

Reasons to keep a snapshot:

• The policy requires it: For example, when using the Balanced policy, all intra-daily snapshots are kept for 24 hours, so all snapshots newer than 24 hours are kept. Assuming you have hourly backups, the retention process will then keep at least 24 snapshots for the last 24 hours.
• The snapshot is a cloud link point: For the purposes of cloud replication, Slide Box and Slide Cloud must share at least one snapshot. We call this snapshot a connecting point or cloud link point. If this snapshot were to be deleted, it would be impossible to only replicate the differences between two snapshots to the cloud, and replication would take much longer. For this reason, cloud link points cannot be deleted.
• The snapshot has not been replicated yet: If a snapshot has not been replicated to the Slide Cloud yet, it will not be automatically deleted locally. This is to ensure that the snapshot can be replicated to the Slide Cloud, even if the Slide Box is offline for a while.
• Active restores: If a snapshot is currently being restored (e.g. in a file restore or virtualization), it cannot be deleted. To delete that snapshot, you must destroy the restore.

Volumes¶

This section lets you configure which volumes to include in the backup. By default, all non-removable volumes are included in the backup, but you can exclude volumes that are not important or that you don't want to back up.

When a volume is excluded, future backups will not include the volume. However, the volume will not be deleted from the Slide Box, and you can still restore old snapshots that include the volume.

Limitations¶

The boot volume, usually C:, cannot be excluded from the backup. It is required for Windows to boot, so virtualizing the system would not work without it.

As of today, only NTFS volumes can be backed up. If you have other volumes, such as FAT32 or ReFS, they will not be included in the backup.

Removable disks and volumes, such as USB flash drives, are not included and not supported.

Please note that we also back up non-volume data, such as the boot sector of the disk or other partitions that do not have a valid file system. This is necessary for a full system restore.

Delete Protected System¶

Deleting a protected system will remove all data associated with this Slide Agent from the Slide Box and the Slide Cloud. This includes all snapshots, settings, and the agent itself.

Performing a deletion will immediately free up space on the Slide Box, and will stop all backups for this agent. The agent will be unpaired, and can be re-paired to the same or a different Slide Box.

Data deletion in the Slide Cloud is delayed by 30 days to ensure that accidental or malicious deletions can be reversed within that time frame. Please note though that restoring a deleted agent is a very cumbersome and manual process, so it is best to avoid it. After 30 days, all data will be permanently deleted from the Slide Cloud.