# Managing SMC Appliance backups

You can create and manage Management Server and Log Server backups for SMC Appliance using the Management Client. You can also use the smca-backup script on the command line of the SMC Appliance.

When you create a Management Server or Log Server backup for the SMC Appliance using the Management Client, SMC Appliance configuration files are included in a directory in the backup .zip file.

There are two ways to restore backups:

- You can use the smca-restore command to restore Management Server and Log Server backups, and SMC Appliance configuration files on the SMC Appliance.
- You can use the sgRestoreMgtBackup and sgRestoreLogBackup commands to restore Management Server and Log Server backups on another platform. When you restore a backup that includes SMC Appliance configuration information on another platform, the SMC Appliance configuration information is ignored.

If you are restoring a backup from a different version of the SMC Appliance, read the version-specific Release Notes before restoring the backup.

To manage backups on the SMC Appliance command line, you must have SMC Appliance Superuser administrator permissions. The backup commands must be run with elevated permissions using sudo. A list of available sudo commands can be found by running `sudo -l` at the command line.

The SMC Appliance has a dedicated partition for storing logs and backups. There are several files included in a full backup of the system.

- Log Server backup
- Management Server backup
- SMC Appliance OS configuration backup

Note: If password protection is enabled for backups, the files are saved with AES 128-bit encryption.

Backup files can be automatically stored in a remote location through a CIFS share.