The Ability to link or chain jobs together...

I agree that it would certainly make sense to be able to create job "streams", similar to what Vault does (run catalog backup, then run ejects, then create reports, etc.).

Additionally, you would need to be able to check the jobs for valid completion codes (and allow, say, a status 1 for come jobs, but not for others).

However, I then see a situation where someone else requests the ability to kick off jobs based on the presence of a file in a directory, or at the end of the execution of a process or job an a server. 

At this point, Symantec *could* get into the realm of a full-blown job scheduling system, similar to TWS Maestro.  From my experience, this could be a difficult position to be in for Symantec, as there are a lot of really good job scheduling systems out there.

I can suggest two workarounds that may be helpful:
1.  Invest in a true job scheduling system and execute your backups from the command line.  I've done this before and it allows a lot of flexibility in how the backups and processes run, and prevents further backup processes from running if you get an invalid return code from a previous process.

2.  For smaller shops that can't dedicate such resources to job scheduling, use the backup-start-notify, etc. scripts within your jobs to execute subsequent jobs.

This can already be done using policies and is pretty easy to setup. I was a bit hesitant at first but after setting it all up all I have to do is put in fresh tapes and the rest is all done automatically.

We currently use policies to do our daily's and duplicate them to tape every weekend
As well as having a monthly that as soon as its done it kicks off the duplication to tape job.

Hello,

I'd like to learn more about setting up 'chained' jobs by policy.

My situation is a wholey Backup-to-Disk method with multiple devices.  I need certain selections to go to certain devices, so how would I set up a policy that would effectively process each sellection one at a time without my having to defined best-guess scheduling as I do now?

Regards,

Travis

Hello everyone,

Thanks for sticking with us and your patience. Sorry we have not been very public on this forum. We have the issues worked out and now will be able to quickly respond to your Ideas and Enhancement Requests for Backup Exec.

We have reviewed this request and are happy to report that we believe we have this addressed now.

Obviously we would like your feedback on this to see if we have hit the mark or still have more work to do.

In the Tools|Options|Selection Lists setting screen in Backup Exec you can change the default to product a new "selection list" for each server or resource you select for backup to be used in a policy. The advantage of this is you can target different selection list selections to different backup destinations as you see fit. You can also use the "Template Rules" feature inside of the Policies you create to control the order of the backup operations and make one job essentially dependent on another. The Templates are very close to a regular Job in this manner.

Try it out and let us know what you think in BE 12.5 today or try out the new  Early Adopter version of Backup Exec 2010 here www.backupexec.com/2010

Let us know if you want more changes on the Policy side after checking out BE 2010.

Thanks for posting this Idea and please keep them coming!

Peter