The setup of the temporary directory is often overlooked and customers typically tend to use the default setting which is fine for simple file or cloud file backup sets. However, for non-file backup sets like databases or virtual machines this is a very important backup set setting. The location of the temporary directory and or the free space allocated to the temporary directory can make or break a successful backup (and restore) and affect the overall performance.

CloudBacko Pro / Lite / Home make use of the temporary directory for both backup and restore jobs.

For a backup job, it is used to temporarily store the:

• Backup set index files, an updated set of index files is generated after each backup. The index files are synchronized to each individual backup destination at the end of each backup job.
• File list.
• Incremental/differential delta files generated during backups.
• For some backup sets, e.g. VM or database the actual database files will be spooled to the temporary folder (AhsayOBM makes a copy of the entire database and saves the database files in the temporary directory) in order to achieve a consistent snapshot for backups.

For a restore job, it is used to temporarily store the:

• Full and incremental/differential delta files retrieved from the backup destination.
• Merging of incremental/differential delta files as part of the restore process.

The following factors need to be taken into account when determining the free space required for the temporary directory drive or partition:

For database backup sets; MS SQL Server in ODBC mode or Lotus Domino/Oracle/MySQL/MariaDB on Linux platform, CloudBacko Pro needs to makes a copy of the entire database in the temporary directory. The free space required on temporary directory must be at least equal to the size of the database you have selected for backup. For example, if you intend to make a backup of a 1TB MS SQL Server database in ODBC mode, the location where you define temporary directory must have at least 1TB of free disk space to accommodate the database file(s).

The default “Delta ratio” setting is 50% for all backup set types, which means that CloudBacko Pro / Lite / Home can generate an incremental or differential delta of up to 50% of the full file size. If you are backing a very large files or databases, for example a backup of a 1TB database then you will need to reserve up to 500GB of free space in drive where your temporary directory is located in order to accommodate the delta file.