Running backup jobs while the computer is in active use

[JChris]

Is it bad to have scheduled backup jobs running on the background while the user is actively using the computer? I know this may impact the performance, but I'm more concerned about file versioning, crashing, file corruption, mismatch issues and things like that. For example, Word is set to create some temp files of the currently opened docs so that if Word crashes the user won't lose everything if they didn't save it, other softwares have similar behavior and create some especial files while they are running and when they close those files are deleted, and so on. Would those files be backed up and perhaps cause some issue or I'm daydreaming? Usually when I start the computer I go ahead and open Chrome, Spotify, Word, Excel, Programming IDEs and stuff like that.

[Mike Resseler]

Hi Juan,

No it is not bad. When we designed VEB, we specifically took this as a major scenario. In fact, we made it a background type of job that minimizes the type of resources so that an end-user "doesn't feel" that the backup is running and he / she can continue to do the work that needs to be done.

There is also no concern about files open / versioning / etc... What happens is that at the moment a backup starts, a "snapshot" is taken and from that snapshot the entire backup is written away to your choice of backup storage. That means that there can be no corruption for files in use because we use the internal framework of MSFT (VSS) to make sure that everything is consistent.

So no worries, the backup can run while you are working (in fact, this happens to me on an almost daily basis since I am either in a completely different timezone or I am working in the evening when my backup starts (because that is for me the most quit time of the day )

Hope it helps
Mike

[JChris]

AMAZING, thanks!