Some policies not autostarting / SAN Media Servers

[wolfe0911]

Environment:
NetBackup 4.5 MP4
1 Solaris 2.7 Master/Media Server
1 Unix Media Server
1 Windows 2000 Media Server
8 SAN Media Servers (all @ MP4)
SSO enabled

Issue:
Some of our policies have stopped autostarting.

Example:
Exch_DB_ccicusmsx7 has two schedules ... One works fine, the other doesn't ... We don't get an error, it just doesn't run ... If we run it manually, it's fine ... The policy is active ...

Schedule: Exch_DB_Friday_Full
Frequency: Calendar
Start Window: Friday 6:30 PM - 11:50 PM

This used to run fine and then it just quit ... We have had the same problem with other policies ... We re-created them and some ran fine the first Friday and then the next Friday, it was the same thing ... The others didn't run at all ...

If I run a bpsched -predict, it shows that it should run ...

# bpsched -predict 07/04/2003 18:30

24 ccicusmsx6 Exch_DB_ccicusmsx6 Exch_DB_Friday_Full FULL Friday 18:30:00

Another interesting point is that all 8 policies that don't start at all are policies for SAN Media Servers ... Whether it be OS only (file only servers) or Exchange ...

For the Exchange servers, there is a separate policy for the OS that uses a non SAN Media Server and it never misses a beat ...

I have a Veritas Support case as well (150-285-561 - open since June 2nd), however, we have made little progress ... I have also searched the web and Veritas' support site and have found either older maintenance pack stuff dealing with timezones or other posts that turned out to be a different problem ...

Please let me know if there is anything else that I can provide ...

Any help would be greatly appreciated ... TIA!!

 

[PGPhantom]

DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT, DO not use calendar based scheduling. It is buggy at best. I have a few enhancement request in for this as you are never guaranteed of a schedule running.

Use frequency based scheduling instead. There are far too many "if's" for calendar based scheduling and I gave up on them a long time ago.

 

[wolfe0911]

I was afraid that someone would have that reply :.( It would be a royal pain to go to frequency with our month end backups that we have ...

Hopefully, they can fix whatever it is that's borken ... However, if we must use frequency to ensure that our backups run, then we must ...

I appreciate your response ....

 

[PGPhantom]

What problems would you have with the monthly backups? If it is a matter of retentions etc, we got around that by creating a script to automatically change the retention levels of specified images.

 

[wolfe0911]

It's scheduling related and not retention related ... We want some policies to have their month end backups on the last Friday and some the last Saturday ... Unless the last Saturday comes before the last Friday ... So, it would be a scheduling nightmare and so much easier if calendar based worked ...

Thanks though!