ubackup Documentation

Using IIS

To install ubackup on Windows with IIS, follow these simple steps. There are some prerequisites which should be verified and installed.

.NET Core Hosting Bundle

In order to run any ASP.NET Core application such as ubackup in IIS, the .NET Core Hosting bundle must be installed on the server hosting IIS. See .NET Core Hosting bundle

This should be installed before ubackup.

Create IIS Application Pool

Add an application pool in IIS named ubackup. Make sure to select No Managed Code for the .NET CLR version field and Integrated for the Managed pipeline mode fields:

Start Mode AlwaysRunning

This step can be skipped to simply try out ubackup.

The default settings for a new application pool will not start the application pool unless an HTTP request is issued. To insure that ubackup can start, in the Advanced Settings for the ubackup application pool, change (General) > Start Mode to AlwaysRunning.

Without this change scheduled backups will not run unless an HTTP request is made (i.e., a web page is served by ubackup) after the site/server is restarted. When moving ubackup into a production environment, this step should be performed.

Don't Recycle

This step can be skipped to simply try out ubackup.

The default settings for a new application pool will recycle the application pool every 1740 minutes. This is unnecessary and should be changed for ubackup. In the Advanced Settings for the ubackup application pool, change Recycling > Regular Time Interval (minutes) to 0.

Application Initialization

This step can be skipped to simply try out ubackup.

Start Mode AlwaysRunning (used above) is only supported by IIS if the Application Initialization role is enabled in Server Roles. Start Server Manager and select Add Roles and Features. Locate the Application Initialization role and select it. This does not require a server restart.

Prepare The Site Folder

Select and create a folder for your ubackup site. In this installation walkthrough, we use C:\Sites\ubackup as the folder where the ubackup site will be located and hosted by IIS.

Folder Security

The folder containing the ubackup site must receive the proper permissions for the ubackup Application Pool, so it has full access to the folder. This can be accomplished using the icacls tool:

icacls C:\Sites\ubackup /grant "IIS APPPOOL\ubackup:(OI)(CI)F"

Add Site To IIS

Add a new site to IIS. We'll use ubackup as the site name. We'll access the ubackup site using http://localhost:1111. This can be changed at a later time once everything is up and running. ubackup supports the use of any port and both http:// and https:// access, provided a certificate for the domain you set up is available.

Download ubackup

Download the ubackup installation file from the following link and save it in folder C:\Sites\ubackup.

Download: Current Version

Unzip

Using File Manager, right click on the downloaded file ubackup.zip (in C:\Sites\ubackup) and select "Extract All..." from the popup menu.

Make sure to extract into C:\Sites\ubackup, NOT C:\Sites\ubackup\ubackup.

Remove ZIP File

Once the ZIP file has been successfully extracted, remove the downloaded ubackup installation ZIP file from C:\Sites\ubackup. It is no longer required.

Access The New ubackup Site

After completing the above steps, access your new site:

http://localhost:1111

If all goes well, you will be greeted with the First-Time Login page.

If there is a problem, you may want to review the logs at C:\Sites\ubackup\logs. If there are no logs or they are empty, you may have missed the .NET Core Hosting bundle or Folder Security steps above.

Security

It is strongly recommended to block the ubackup site from external access. An attacker could obtain database server access information if the site were compromised.

The easiest way is to block port 1111 (or whatever port you used above) using Windows Firewall. The site can then only be accessed locally on the IIS host. Alternatively you could allow access to port 1111 from just select IP addresses.