Windows Incremental backups 1

[RenC]

Our incremental backups on our Windows clients have been running a full every night.

We have a Windows media server
Windows clients running backups over a second interface (Required interface is set)
Use Archive bit is set on the clients
Full and cumulative incremental schedules are in the same policy.

So far Veritas support has not been any help. Has anyone run into this or know what we can look at.

Any help is appreciated

Thanks

 

[comtec17]

What are the frequencies set to in both the incremental and full backup jobs?

Which version of NetBackup are you using?

 

[RenC]

We are running NetBackup 4.5 at the MP3 level.

Full backup is set to 1 day
Incrementals are set on a calendar basis

 

[comtec17]

You will need to set your full backup to every 4 days since you want incrementals. With the full backup set to every 1 day it will backup full every 1 day.

 

[RenC]

That would make sense, but our window for that backup is only set for Saturday in the start/stop times. My understanding is that the full backup should run every day, as long as there is a window open. Am I missing something, or is there something else I should be checking.

Thanks for your help

 

[comtec17]

If the schedule is set to run on Saturdays only but with a frequency of every 1 day what is to happen if your backups go into Sunday morning? It is found and recommended by Veritas that you set up your frequency to 4 days so that if the backup runs over your scheduled time that the next full will run properly. For example, your full backups kick off Saturday @ 8:00 PM and run until 6:00 AM on Sunday, your frequency of the full backup states to run every 1 week so in reality the next time your full backup is scheduled to run is on Sunday after 6:00 AM.

How are your incrementals setup? Do you have a file list like ALL_LOCAL_DRIVES or Streams?

 

[RenC]

Our backups start at midnight, so we haven't run into that yet.

Your questions did lead us to the solution however. Apparently, if your full backup is set to calendar, and your incrementals are set to frequency based (or vice versa), Netbackup will consider them all fulls. Once we changed the schedule type to be consistent, either way, our incremental backups started working.

Thanks for the help

 

[RenC]

Ok, apparently we are still having the problem and it is getting more confusing. Here is an example of what we are seeing. We have one windows client. This windows client has three shares. Each share is a seperate policy in NetBackup. We created the first policy, then just copied it and changed the drive path to create the other two policies. So, other than the drive path for files to backup, the policies are identical. The client is the same for all three policies.

One of these policies is running a weekly full and daily incrementals just as we expect. The other two policies are backing up every file every day (even though it is the incremental backup that is running). We know that the archive bit is set and we are using the archive bit flag for the backups.

It doesn't make sense to us that, on the same client, with three virtually identical policies, that only one works.

Thoughts?

 

[RenC]

Ok, more information. We have noticed in the bpsched log on the Master server and the bpbkar log on the client, parameters that are passed during the backup. In the bpsched log it shows:

START BACKUP -c <client name> ........ -dt <#> ...........

Does anyone know where we can get information on what all these parameters are? We have found that when the -dt value is 0, a full backup is run regardless if the policy is set to full or incremental backup. When it is any other number, an incremental is run. What we don't know is what &quot;-dt&quot; means or how it gets set.

Any help is appreciated.

 

[PGPhantom]

Frequencies, schedules etc are quite often confusing - I have 250 policies set up and never miss a single incremental or full and this is how ...

Incremental = Sunday-Friday. Frequency = once every 12 hours. Backup Window = 10-11 hours, never exceeding 12 on Sunday-Friday.

Full Backups = Saturday. Frequency = once every day. Backup Window = Saturday for an time not exceeding 24 hours.

 

[RenC]

Our frequencies and schedules are set up fine. In fact, three of them are working as expected. But we can make a copy and the copy won't work. Whatever our problem is, it does not appear to be due to the policy. Please see detail above.

 

[metcalfep]

I have a server with 785 directories

I would like to back them up as follows

NEW_STREAM
All directories beginning with the letter a
NEW_STREAM
All directories beginning with the letter b-d
NEW_STREAM
All directories beginning with the letter e-j
NEW_STREAM
All directories beginning with the letter k-m
NEW_STREAM
All directories beginning with the letter n
NEW_STREAM
All directories beginning with the letter o-y
NEW_STREAM
All directories beginning with the letter z
NEW_STREAM
All directories beginning with the number 0-9

Using Veritas Netbackup 4.5 FP_5

Unix Master Server (Sun)
Windows 2003 Media Server

Will I get errors if directories do not exist ?? e.g. error 71

Any Ideas ??

 

[goace]

Having 3 distinct policies for the same client is your problem. Each policy will reset the archive bit. I'm not sure if there is a way to use the client based archive bit per each policy.

Consider this. I create a new policy where:
Full runs on Saturday
Incrementals run Sunday - Friday.

I create this new policy on FRIDAY where the Incremental will run-Netbackup does not care about the client archive bit-the Inc will run but it will back up the entire client as if it were a Full backup. On Saturday, the Full will run as scheduled.

Please correct me if I'm wrong but that's my experience. And yes I have over 160 policies and think the Frequency based is better than the Calendar. I used to use Calendar until I discovered a full backup would run every 2 weeks.