Veritas NetBackup™ Administrator's Guide, Volume I
- Section I. About NetBackup
- Section II. Configuring hosts
- Configuring Host Properties
- About the NetBackup Host Properties
- Access Control properties
- Bandwidth properties
- Busy File Settings properties
- Client Attributes properties
- Client Settings properties for UNIX clients
- Client Settings properties for Windows clients
- Data Classification properties
- Default Job Priorities properties
- Encryption properties
- Exchange properties
- Exclude Lists properties
- Fibre Transport properties
- Firewall properties
- General Server properties
- Global Attributes properties
- Logging properties
- Login Banner Configuration properties
- Media properties
- Network Settings properties
- Port Ranges properties
- Preferred Network properties
- Resilient Network properties
- Restore Failover properties
- Retention Periods properties
- Scalable Storage properties
- Servers properties
- SharePoint properties
- SLP Parameters properties
- Throttle Bandwidth properties
- Universal Settings properties
- User Account Settings properties
- Configuration options for NetBackup servers
- PREFERRED_NETWORK option for NetBackup servers
- THROTTLE_BANDWIDTH option for NetBackup servers
- Configuration options for NetBackup clients
- IGNORE_XATTR option for NetBackup clients
- VXSS_NETWORK option for NetBackup clients
- Configuring server groups
- Configuring host credentials
- Managing media servers
- Configuring Host Properties
- Section III. Configuring storage
- Configuring disk storage
- Configuring robots and tape drives
- About configuring robots and tape drives in NetBackup
- Adding a robot to NetBackup manually
- Managing robots
- Adding a tape drive to NetBackup manually
- Adding a tape drive path
- Correlating tape drives and device files on UNIX hosts
- Managing tape drives
- Performing device diagnostics
- Configuring tape media
- About NetBackup volume pools
- About WORM media
- About adding volumes
- Configuring media settings
- Media settings options
- Media type (new media setting)
- Media settings options
- About barcodes
- Configuring barcode rules
- Configuring media ID generation rules
- Adding volumes by using the Actions menu
- Configuring media type mappings
- Managing volumes
- About exchanging a volume
- About frozen media
- About injecting and ejecting volumes
- About rescanning and updating barcodes
- About labeling NetBackup volumes
- About moving volumes
- About recycling a volume
- Managing volume pools
- Managing volume groups
- Inventorying robots
- About showing a robot's contents
- About updating the NetBackup volume configuration
- About the vmphyinv physical inventory utility
- Configuring storage units
- About the Storage utility
- Creating a storage unit
- About storage unit settings
- Absolute pathname to directory or absolute pathname to volume setting for storage units
- Maximum concurrent jobs storage unit setting
- Staging backups
- Creating a basic disk staging storage unit
- Configuring storage unit groups
- Section IV. Configuring storage lifecycle policies (SLPs)
- Configuring storage lifecycle policies
- Storage operations
- Index From Snapshot operation in an SLP
- Snapshot operation in an SLP
- Retention types for SLP operations
- Capacity managed retention type for SLP operations
- Storage lifecycle policy options
- Using a storage lifecycle policy to create multiple copies
- Storage lifecycle policy versions
- Section V. Configuring backups
- Creating backup policies
- Planning for policies
- Policy Attributes tab
- Policy storage (policy attribute)
- Policy volume pool (policy attribute)
- Take checkpoints every __ minutes (policy attribute)
- Backup Network Drives (policy attribute)
- Cross mount points (policy attribute)
- Encryption (policy attribute)
- Collect true image restore information (policy attribute) with and without move detection
- Use Accelerator (policy attribute)
- Enable optimized backup of Windows deduplicated volumes
- Use Replication Director (policy attributes)
- Schedule Attributes tab
- Type of backup (schedule attribute)
- Frequency (schedule attribute)
- Multiple copies (schedule attribute)
- Retention (schedule attribute)
- Media multiplexing (schedule attribute)
- Start Window tab
- Include Dates tab
- How open schedules affect calendar-based and frequency-based schedules
- About the Clients tab
- Backup Selections tab
- Adding backup selections to a policy
- Verifying the Backup Selections list
- Pathname rules for UNIX client backups
- About the directives on the Backup Selections list
- ALL_LOCAL_DRIVES directive
- Files that are excluded from backups by default
- Disaster Recovery tab
- Active Directory granular backups and recovery
- Synthetic backups
- Using the multiple copy synthetic backups method
- Protecting the NetBackup catalog
- Parts of the NetBackup catalog
- Protecting the NetBackup catalog
- Archiving the catalog and restoring from the catalog archive
- Estimating catalog space requirements
- About the NetBackup relational database
- About the NetBackup relational database (NBDB) installation
- Using the NetBackup Database Administration utility on Windows
- Using the NetBackup Database Administration utility on UNIX
- Post-installation tasks
- About backup and recovery procedures
- Managing backup images
- Creating backup policies
- Section VI. Deployment Management
- Deployment Management
- Adding or changing schedules in a deployment policy
- Deployment Management
- Section VII. Configuring replication
- About NetBackup replication
- About NetBackup Auto Image Replication
- Viewing the replication topology for Auto Image Replication
- About the storage lifecycle policies required for Auto Image Replication
- Removing or replacing replication relationships in an Auto Image Replication configuration
- About NetBackup replication
- Section VIII. Monitoring and reporting
- Monitoring NetBackup activity
- About the Jobs tab
- About the Daemons tab
- About the Processes tab
- About the Drives tab
- About the jobs database
- About pending requests and actions
- Reporting in NetBackup
- Using the Logging Assistant
- Monitoring NetBackup activity
- Section IX. Administering NetBackup
- Management topics
- Accessing a remote server
- Using the NetBackup Remote Administration Console
- Run-time configuration options for the NetBackup Administration Console
- About improving NetBackup performance
- About adjusting time zones in the NetBackup Administration console
- Alternate server restores
- About performing alternate server restores
- Managing client backups and restores
- About client-redirected restores
- Powering down and rebooting NetBackup servers
- About Granular Recovery Technology
- About configuring Services for Network File System (NFS) on Windows 2012, 2012 R2, or 2016
- About configuring Services for Network File System (NFS) on Windows 2008 and 2008 R2
About assigning retention periods
The retention period for data depends on the likelihood of restoring information from media after a certain period of time. Some types of data (financial records, for example) have legal requirements that determine the retention level. Other data (preliminary documents, for example) can probably be expired when the final version is complete.
A backup's retention also depends on what needs to be recovered from the backup. For example, if day-to-day changes are critical, keep all the incremental backups in addition to the full backups for as long as the data is needed. If incremental backups only track work in progress toward monthly reports, expire the incremental backups sooner. Rely on the full backups for long-term recovery.
Establish some guidelines that apply to most of the data to determine retention periods. Note the files or the directories that have retention requirements outside of these guidelines. Plan to create separate policies for the data that falls outside of the retention requirement guidelines. For example, place the files and directories with longer retention requirements in a separate policy. Schedule longer retention times for the separate policies without keeping all policies for the longer retention period.
The following table describes recommended retention periods for different types of backups.
Table: Recommended retention periods for different types of backups
Type of backup | Description |
---|---|
Specify a time period that is longer than the frequency setting for the schedule. (The frequency is how often the backup runs). For example, if the frequency is one week, specify a retention period of 2-4 weeks. Two to 4 weeks provides enough of a margin to ensure that the current full backup does not expire before the next full backup occurs. | |
Specify a time period that is longer than the period between full backups. For example, if full backups occur weekly, save the incremental backups for 2 weeks. | |
Specify a time period that is longer than the frequency setting for the schedule. (The frequency is how often the backup runs). For example, if the frequency setting is one day, specify a retention period of one week. One week provides enough of a margin to ensure that the current cumulative-incremental backup does not expire before the next successful one occurs. A complete restore requires the previous full backup plus the most recent cumulative-incremental backup. |
The following table suggests several ways that you can prevent backups from expiring earlier than desired.
Table: Suggestions for preventing prematurely expired backups
Another consideration for data retention is off-site storage of the backup media. Off-site storage protects against the disasters that may occur at the primary site.
Consider the following off-site storage methods as precautions for disaster recovery:
Use the duplication feature to make a second copy for off-site storage.
Send monthly or weekly full backups to an off-site storage facility.
To restore the data, request the media from the facility. To restore a total directory or disk with incremental backups requires the last full backup plus all incremental backups.
Configure an extra set of schedules to create the backups to use as duplicates for off-site storage.
Regardless of the method that is used for off-site storage, ensure that adequate retention periods are configured. Use the NetBackup import feature to retrieve expired backups.
By default, NetBackup stores each backup on a tape volume that contains existing backups at the same retention level. If a backup has a retention level of 2, NetBackup stores it on a tape volume with other backups at retention level 2. When NetBackup encounters a backup with a different retention level, it switches to an appropriate volume. Because tape volumes remain assigned to NetBackup until all the backups on the tape expire, this approach results in more efficient use of media. One small backup with an infinite retention prevents a volume from being reused, even if all other backups on the volume expired.
To mix retention levels on volumes, select Media host properties.
in theIf you keep only one retention level on each volume, do not use any more retention levels than necessary. Multiple retention levels increase the number of required volumes.
See Media properties.
Note:
Retention levels can be mixed on disk volumes with no restrictions.
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