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Archiving techniques 6.5.5

Updated: 21 Sep 2010 | 7 comments
MickBoosh's picture
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Hi All,

I want to add a backup with a retention of 1 year to run once a month. Currently we have  a diff every week day and full every other weekend. Is there a way I can add a new full in to run only when the full every 2 weeks runs easily? Am I best playing with exlusion dates or is there an easier, better way?

Thanks in advance

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rjrumfelt's picture
08
Mar
2010
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Does it matter

on which weekend you want the full backup to run?

If not, you can set this up pretty easily using frequency based scheduling.

Ron Cohn's picture
11
Mar
2010
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Create a synthetic monthly

Mike,

In our case, we only run weekly fulls and daily diffs.  At the end of the month, instead of running a special backup, take your last set of fulls and last diff and change the expiration date of the images to be 1 year from now (our case is 13 months).  This is a cmd file I run:

echo off
echo Press "any key" to continue or "ctrl-c" to terminate script
pause

rem * ------------------------------------------------------------ *
rem * The following will change the data expdate on a Vault tape *
rem * ............................................................ *
rem * vmchange -m 000??? -d "Monthly_2010_02_February" -h scfbi0p0nbu1
rem * bpexpdate -m 000??? -d 04/01/2011 23:59:59 -host scfbi0p0nbu1 -force
rem * ------------------------------------------------------------ *
echo on

vmchange -m 000??? -d "Monthly_2010_02_February" -h scfbi0p0nbu1
bpexpdate -m 000??? -d 04/01/2011 23:59:59 -host scfbi0p0nbu1 -force

echo off
rem * ------------------------------------------------------------ *
rem * Script Completed
rem * ------------------------------------------------------------ *
echo Script Completed
pause

 

Ron Cohn
"I maybe lost, but I am making good time..."

Environment: NBU 6.5.5 for Windows
 Write to EMC DL5100 / Vault to ADIC i500

MickBoosh's picture
17
Mar
2010
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Ron, Thanks for that, it's

Ron,

Thanks for that, it's certainly worth thinking about, although I did want something a little more automatic.

Just reading the script, doesn't bpexpdate delete all records of backups on that tape?

Mike

Ron Cohn's picture
17
Mar
2010
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Mike, The command is not

Mike,

The command is not deleting images, but changing the expiration date to another date/time in the future.  If I remember correctly, "-d 0" expires the images.

As for automatic, you can code a program, but in our case, we run "staggered fulls".  That is, we run selected fulls 4 out of the 7 days of each week.  So instead of loading up on Friday nights, I run fulls Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Sunday nights.  This gives me the ability to run backups 7 days a week and none my backups go past 6:00am.

With how we do things, the concept of weekly / monthly / quarterly just does not exist.  All we do is take the tapes needed and reset the retention period to what is required - for us.

Ron Cohn
"I maybe lost, but I am making good time..."

Environment: NBU 6.5.5 for Windows
 Write to EMC DL5100 / Vault to ADIC i500

Omar Villa's picture
17
Mar
2010
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Other schedule

Sorry if I didnt get well the question, but I think you asked for a monthly backup run, just create a schedule named monthly and ensure is under frequency of every 4 weeks with 1 year retention and you'll be fine.

Omar A Villa

Netbackup Expert

These are my personal views and not those of the company I work for

Ron Cohn's picture
17
Mar
2010
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Omar, A month is not 28

Omar,

A month is not 28 days.  For *many* corporation, data has to be backed up after the last day of the month.  Frequency based policies do not work well in this environment and with all the issues NBU 6.5.x has had with calendar based policies, my approach removes having to play games and create extra schedules.

Ron Cohn
"I maybe lost, but I am making good time..."

Environment: NBU 6.5.5 for Windows
 Write to EMC DL5100 / Vault to ADIC i500

MickBoosh's picture
18
Mar
2010
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Omar, I don't want the

Omar,

I don't want the schedule to run at the same time as the one that is set to every 2 weeks retain for a month.

Ron,

Yes bpexpdate does indeed delete images with the '0' parameter, so by putting the date in would expire it then. Thanks for that.

Our data doesn't need to be backed up on the last day of the month, like some cases. I think I might bite the bullet and use the schedule on the 2 week backup and the a monthly one.

Cheers

Mike