End-of-Month Schedule with Split Window

[jimbloemker]

Hi! We're trying to make our policies that do daily incremental backups and weekly full backups also do full backups on the last day of the month, so full backups are picked up by monthly duplication/vaulting jobs.

The only problem is that our backup window spans midnight. It is 6 PM to 6 AM. We want this end-of-month job to start in the window that starts on the last day of the month at 6 PM and ends on the first day of the month at 6 AM.

Does anybody have an idea how we can do this? We are running version 5.1 on Solaris 9. I attended a Veritas Advanced Troubleshooting class a couple of weeks ago and the instructor was stumped by this. Thanks!

Jim Bloemker
jbloemker@virtua.org

 

[Stumpr]

I do not use calendar based scheduling because of the midnight problem. Here is something that will work and that I DO use.

daily_inc frequency 18 hours retention 1 month
Weekly_full frequency 6 days retention 1 month
Monthly_full frequency 26 days retention 6 months
window of opportunity 6PM - 6AM

The sweet part is that only 1 of the 2 full schedules will run and it will be the one that meets frequency requirement AND has had the most time pass since it was last successfully ran.

It is possible for both to have met the requirement 26 days after the last monthly. When this happens, NetBackup will schedule the monthly, but will NOT schedule the weekly!




Bob Stump
Just because the VERITAS documentation states a certain thing does not make it a fact and that is truth.

 

[jimbloemker]

Bob -

How does the 26 day frequency guarantee running on the last day of every month / first day?

Is your "window of opportunity" every day, or selected days in each schedule?

Thanks. This is the stuff I don't understand, but I'm a quick learner!

Jim

 

[Stumpr]

Oh, I'm sorry. I was thinking of the last weekend of the month. That is my requirements. This won't work for your situation.

Bob Stump
Just because the VERITAS documentation states a certain thing does not make it a fact and that is truth.

 

[Stumpr]

I have used cron to schedule backups. The drawback is that you would also need to create an error checking mechanism because Netbackup does not retry command initiated backups.

Bob Stump
Just because the VERITAS documentation states a certain thing does not make it a fact and that is truth.

 

[Stumpr]

How about if you create a separate policy to do the last/first backup each month. And then use the exclude feature in the normal policy to exclude the last/first day of the month?

Bob Stump
Just because the VERITAS documentation states a certain thing does not make it a fact and that is truth.

 

[jimbloemker]

What if I created an "end-of month" schedule to do full backups, set a backup window every day from 6 PM - 6 AM, and set the frequency for 28 days...

Then, once a month (first day of month?) with a cron job, change the frequency to the number of days in that month with a 'bpplschedrep' command?

Is there a way, too, to keep a new schedule from running until the first day you want it to run? Or will it run on the first day it's activated?

Thanks for your help so far, Bob!

Jim Bloemker

 

[Stumpr]

There is an activate " Go into effect at" time on the policy attributes page.

Bob Stump
Just because the VERITAS documentation states a certain thing does not make it a fact and that is truth.

 

[jimbloemker]

True, but isn't that for the whole policy? I was talking about individual schedules within the policy...

 

[jimbloemker]

I'm trying to get my management now to change monthly and annual duplication/vaulting jobs to the first Saturday of the month (I know Bob is doing this on the last weekend of the month.)

Is there a way I can write a schedule without using calendar that does the following (the start window will be 6:00 AM to 1:00 PM on one day):

first Saturday of year - 6 year retention (314 weeks)
first Saturday of month, if not first Saturday of year - 1 year retention (53 weeks)
every other Saturday - 4 week retention

I guess the start window should only occur on Saturday...
I would like to put all the schedules in the same policy.
This sounds like Bob's schedule above - I just need a little help tweaking it...

Thanks!

Jim

 

[jimbloemker]

Another question - if we put this all in the same policy, how do we suppress the Monthly and Annual schedules so they don't run for the first time until they're supposed to (first Saturday of month, first Saturday of year)? If I put it in this week, wouldn't the Annual kick off? We'd like the weekly to run this weekend, and the Monthly to run NEXT weekend, etc.

Thanks again!

Jim