Scheduling vs Availability Window

[unify_nathan]

I just tripped over a thing that is somewhere between a UI glitch, a bug, and an embarrassing error on my part.

I like the way Veeam will warn you if you try to "run now" a backup job in a way that violates your configured availability windows. I just found out that a similar protection applies to scheduled jobs, except the warning is silent and can lead to missed recovery points if you're not aware of it.


To reproduce:

1. Schedule a backup job. Let's backup that big, important server over there, 'BIGPROD-X', starting at: let's say 11:30pm.

2. Protect 'production hours' with a schedule that allows this job to run between 7pm and 7am. Nice. Any late-running backups will get terminated rather than impact the app during the day, and any ad-hoc / 'ooops, some backups failed, let me just quickly re-run them' scenarios are going to produce "Are you sure?" warnings.

3. Get a request from the application owner of the app running on BIGPROD-X. For operational reasons, he'd like for the backup to be moved forward to a 6pm start time. Easy.... just move the scheduled start time forward from 11:30pm to 6:00pm

The job configuration UI has no issues with this, and allows the job to be saved. But the job doesn't run. And when you investigate why, it seems that the job isn't scheduled. OK. Let's delete and re-add the schedule. Saves OK, but looking at the 'next scheduled' job: Nope, it's not scheduled. Move the schedule to 6:30pm, maybe that will fix it? Nope.

A bit of prodding later, trying to rule out anything embarrassing before I contacted support, it occurred to me to have a look at the availability window and I realised that the fine folks at Veeam Software are doing me a favour by preventing my scheduled job starting during a timeframe protected by the availability-window feature. That's grand, except for the minor annoyances that a) there's no feedback to the user about this sub-optimal scheduling configuration, and b) the job doesn't just wait until the availability window opens..... it just doesn't schedule itself to run at all.

I've fixed my own problem, now, so won't be opening a support case for this, but thought I'd leave a note here partly to remind myself if this ever happens again, and also partly in case someone @ Veeam wants to make a feature request out of this for v12.

[HannesK]

Hello,
we try to find a balance between "too many annoying warnings" and "not enough warnings"

We will think about it, thanks though!

Best regards,
Hannes

[unify_nathan]

Thanks Hannes. I'm glad to hear you're working on that. Since you mention it: Can you "mute" the warning that pops up whenever you right-click > edit a backup job > make no changes at all > hit cancel. Being asked if I want to abandon changes on a dialog where I've made no changes is a little bit in the "too many annoying warnings" bucket.

The situation like I posted about above is more "annoying that there was no warning about this", especially because it seems obvious to me that there's a gap between the indicated intent and end result. If a "run now" command can get a warning to say "hey, are you sure - it's outside the normal permitted times to run this backup" then something similar when configuring the backup to run (say) every day with a similar misconfiguation seems like a good place to pop up a warning.

Thanks,
Nathan