Prepare for Backup

review the following information to prepare for restoring a backup important if you create a backup on an instance of belden horizon data operations running on a virtual machine, you can't use the same backup to restore an instance of belden horizon data operations running on a physical device make sure you do the following before restoring a backup obtain a license for backup and restore a new license is needed each time the belden horizon data operations device changes its mac address activate the device with belden horizon data manager see docid\ dx7ltfke9hcgpqpjom du for more information tip request a license key contact your belden representative to request a license key once an additional license key has been received, go to system > license to enter the license key and activate the license see docid 4fd94grecashrmvf4rryk or docid\ v b2hnaqwelsnvxqvvhpf your organization's standards and requirements dictate the frequency of device backups belden horizon data operations configuration backup and virtual machine snapshots some virtual machines (such as vmware esxi or ms hyperv) offer snapshots as a disaster recovery feature therefore, for these virtually deployed belden horizon data operations instances, configuration backups should not be used as the primary means of disaster recovery a snapshot is the state of a virtual machine at a specific point in time in addition to being able to save a belden horizon data operations’s state like a configuration backup can, snapshots also preserve the virtual device’s memory and disc allocation for these virtual machines, configuration backups can be used instead to reset the configuration of a virtual device or to duplicate the setup of one device to many other virtual devices