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
- 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 SCSI addresses on Windows hosts
- 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. 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 VII. 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 VIII. 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 backup frequency
To determine backup frequency, consider how often data changes. For example, determine if files change several times a day, once a day, weekly, or monthly.
Typically, sites perform daily backups to preserve daily work. Daily backups ensure that only one day's work is lost in case of a disk failure. More frequent backups are necessary when important data changes many times during the day and the changes would be difficult to reconstruct.
Daily backups are usually the incremental backups that record the changes since the last incremental or full backup. Incremental backups conserve resources because they use less storage and take less time to perform than full backups.
Full backups usually occur less frequently than incremental backups but should occur often enough to avoid accumulating consecutive incremental backups. A large number of incremental backups between full backups increases the time it takes to restore a file. The time increases because of the effort that is required to merge the incremental backups when files and directories upon restore.
Consider the following when setting the frequency for full backups:
Extend the time between full backups for the files that seldom change. A longer frequency uses fewer system resources. It also does not significantly increase recovery time because the incremental backups between full backups are smaller.
Decrease the time between full backups for the files that change frequently. A shorter frequency decreases restore time. A shorter time between full backups can also use fewer resources. It reduces the cumulative effect of the longer incremental backups that are necessary to keep up with frequent changes in the files.
To achieve the most efficient use of resources, ensure that most of the files in a given policy change at about the same rate. For example, assume that half of the files in a policy selection list change frequently enough to require a full backup every week. However, the remaining files seldom change and require monthly full backups only. If all the files are in the same policy, full backups are performed weekly on all the files. This wastes system resources because half the files need full backups only once a month. A better approach is to divide the backups into two policies, each with the appropriate backup schedule, or to use synthetic backups.
If more than one automatic schedule is due for a client within a policy, the backup frequency determines the schedule that NetBackup uses as follows:
Jobs from the schedule with the lower frequency (longer period between backups) always have higher priority. For example, a schedule that has a backup frequency of one month takes priority over a schedule with a backup frequency of 2 weeks.
When two schedules are each due to run, the schedule with the schedule name that is first in alphabetical order runs first. Alphabetical priority occurs if both of the following are true:
Each schedule is within the defined time window.
Each schedule is configured with the same frequency value.
NetBackup prioritizes the example schedules in the following order:
Table: Examples of schedule frequency and priority
Schedule Name | Frequency | Priority |
---|---|---|
monthly_full | One month | First |
weekly_full | One week | Second |
daily_incremental | One day | Third |