Linked Jobs and Post commands

[doggatas]

Hi

I have four reverse incremental and an incremental job that are linked together:


Daily-Exhchange2007 Scheduled at 8:00pm
Daily-Exchange2010 after Daily-Exchange2007
Daily-Server2003 after Daily-Exchange2010
Daily-Server2008R2 after Daily-Server2003 (Post Command)
Daily-FileServer after Daily-Server2003 (Incremental with active full on Saturday + Post Command on Sat only)

Post Command:
The post command is a batch file that starts a Backup Exec job. The selection list for the backup job excludes .vrb files for directories where the reverse incremental jobs write to and excludes .vbk files for the single directory that the incremental job writes to. I need to have full backups for the non file server servers written to tape. Ideally I would like to have reverse incremental for file server and have full vbk to tape for that as well, but the vbk is 1.1tb and this blows my copy to tape window out.

The Daily-FileServer job is well and truly finished by the time the Backup Exec job has reached the new vib file.

I have configured a second Backup Exec job where the selection list excludes .vib files, this is to grab the full backup after the active full that is configured to run on a Saturday.

We are not required to complete backup jobs over the weekend therefore the Daily-FileServer job doesn't have the previous job to kick it off and I can't have two schedules for the one job. So I am using task scheduler to execute a powershell command that kicks off the Job. I could unlink the job and run it on its own schedule but I would rather not have two jobs running simultaneously.

What happens on a Friday when it is quite possible the Daily-FileServer could either start before midnight or after midnight depending on how long the previous jobs take? I guess this wouldn't matter if the post command went off the day the job started not the day it finished.

After writing all that I think my best option is to unlink the Daily-FileServer job and take the performance hit on the backp target. The job cross over window should be quite small so shouldn't be that bad.

Thought I'd check here first to see if the great veeam community had a better solution.

[veremin]

What happens on a Friday when it is quite possible the Daily-FileServer could either start before midnight or after midnight depending on how long the previous jobs take?

The scenario would be as following:

Daily-File Server job starts before midnight:

• Friday (chain): a new increment will be created
• Saturday (PS): a script will run an active full backup

Daily-File Server job starts after midnight (on Saturday):

• Saturday (chain): a new full backup will be created
• Saturday (PS): a script will create an increment

Hope this helps.
Thanks.

[doggatas]

Thank you for the prompt response much appreciated

[veremin]

You’re welcome. Should any other question arise, feel free to contact us. Thanks.

[yizhar]

Hi.

I think that job linking is a bad idea.
If you wish to run jobs sequentially, better disable all schedules and linking in job properties, and just use single PS script that will run jobs in the order you like, including launching BE job or other tasks.

For example:

======================

Add-PSSnapin VeeamPSSnapin

Get-VBRJob -name JOBNAME1,JOBNAME2,JOBNAME3 | Start-VBRJob | ft -AutoSize Name,State,CreationTime,EndTime,Result > LOGFILE.LOG

rem - Now run whatever BE job or other post actions you need.

Send-MailMessage -To ADMIN@MY.DOMAIN -Subject Back-All-Daily -From VEEAM@MY.DOMAIN -SmtpServer MY.SMTP.SERVER -Body (Get-Content LOGFILE.LOG | out-string)

======================

See this post:
Community Forums • View topic - Veeam Backup Script to run multiple jobs in sequence
http://forums.veeam.com/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=13710

[doggatas]

Hi Vizhar

Thanks for this alternative option. Can you put forward some reasons as to why I should use that simple script over the Veeam GUI schedule + link jobs?

Cheers
David

[yizhar]

Thanks for this alternative option. Can you put forward some reasons as to why I should use that simple script over the Veeam GUI schedule + link jobs?

Hi.

Main reasons are:

Dependency - if you have linked jobs, what happens in case you wish to run just a single job without the other?

Management - adding/removing/reordering jobs in the script is simpler without accounting for links.

Reporting - as you can see above, a simple one liner can provide daily summary report which looks like this:

Name State CreationTime EndTime Result
JOB1 Stopped 7/26/2013 8:00:08 PM 7/26/2013 8:46:52 PM Success
JOB2 Stopped 7/26/2013 8:46:54 PM 7/26/2013 8:58:50 PM Success
JOB3 Stopped 7/26/2013 8:58:51 PM 7/26/2013 9:10:30 PM Success

However, I would still like Veeam to add a "job group" feature which will allow us to join several jobs, in one group for schedule and reporting, this will solve the need for scripts like above.

Yizhar