Schedule not flexible enough

[UT2015]

Hi there,

it seems the scheduling is not flexible enough for us. This is what we want:
- full backup to tape on Saturday, 14:00, which will take approx. 21 hours (until Sunday 11:00)
- incremental backup to tape on Monday to Friday, 01:00 in the night

The problem is that is is actually only possible to create one schedule (exactly one starting time) for both jobs, full and incremental. It is not possible to create one job (including full and incremental backups) with different starting times. It is also not possible to create two separate jobs with different starting times, because a backup to tape job must include full backups (it is not possible to leave them out).

Is there any solution for our problem?

Regards,
UT2015

[UT2015]

I think a possible solution would be to use dependencies, meaning start the tape-job after the to-disk-Job has finished.

What happens if the to-disk job is started on Friday and finished on Saturday, the to-tape-job starts after that and the to-tape-job has a synthetic full backup scheduled for Saturday. Would that work?

[PTide]

Hi,

You can select "As new backup file appear" option and specify backup window so the tape job will be restricted to start at the beginning of the time frame. does that fit your needs?

P.S. The approach that you've suggested will work too. Just make sure that you use forever incremental mode in your source job.

Thanks

[Dima P.]

UT2015,

Another option might be to create a backup to tape for full backups only and set a secondary file to tape job with the include mask configured to pick only the needed incrementals.

[UT2015]

Thanks PTide and Dima. I'll first try the dependency between Backup-to-Disk- and Backup-to-Tape-Job and will see if it works this weekend...

[UT2015]

That's bad: It worked two times flawlessly (Friday and Saturday) but did not work on Sunday. The Backup-to-Tape-Job which is depending on the Backup-to-Disk-Job didn't even start on Sunday.

Can anybody tell me, in which log file there should normally be a note when a depending job is started?

[PTide]

It worked two times flawlessly (Friday and Saturday) but did not work on Sunday. The Backup-to-Tape-Job which is depending on the Backup-to-Disk-Job didn't even start on Sunday.

Did the backup-to-disk job start on Sunday? Have you tried two other approaches?

Thanks

[veremin]

Can anybody tell me, in which log file there should normally be a note when a depending job is started?

Either backup job or backup to tape job log should contain this information.

At which time did a source job start on Sunday? How both schedules look like?

Thanks.

[UT2015]

Did the backup-to-disk job start on Sunday?

Yes, the to-disk-job started and finished successfully, the to-tape-job did not even start.

Have you tried two other approaches?

Not yet, because I prefer using dependency between two jobs. That is the easiest to configure and completely independent of any fixed times.

You can select "As new backup file appear" option and specify backup window so the tape job will be restricted to start at the beginning of the time frame.

Does the tape job start if any new backup file appears? The job consists of several backup files (some Endpoint Backups and one VMware Backup). I would like the to-tape-job start if the last (VMware Backup) job finished. I don't like that rough time frame, with dependencies it would not waste a minute but would directly start.

Another option might be to create a backup to tape for full backups only and set a secondary file to tape job with the include mask configured to pick only the needed incrementals.

I think the file-to-tape-job is slower than the backups-to-tape-job. At least it was in V8 in our environment.

Regards,
UT2015

[UT2015]

At which time did a source job start on Sunday? How both schedules look like?

- VMware backup: starts everyday except Saturday at 23:45h, active full backup on Friday
- Backup to tape: starts always after VMware-backup-Job from above, full backup weekly on Saturday

History:
- VMware backup (active full) Friday 20.05.2016 23:45 to Saturday 21.05.2016 10:29
- Backup to tape Saturday 21.05.2016 10:29 to Sunday 22.05.2016 06:26
- VMware backup (incremental) Sunday 22.05.2016 23:45 to Monday 23.05.2016 00:06
- Backup to tape Monday 22.05.2016 00:06 *missing*

[veremin]

- Backup to tape Monday 22.05.2016 00:06 *missing*

And it doesn't have a backup window specified that prevents job execution at the given time frame? If not, it might be worth reaching our support team, as described behaviour doesn't look expected. Thanks.

[UT2015]

And it doesn't have a backup window specified that prevents job execution at the given time frame?

Where should that be defined? Under "schedule" "Run the Job automatically" is tagged, and "after this job" is selected. It is not possible to define a time frame in that case.

[veremin]

Got it. I though you were leveraging "as new backup file appears" option. Thus, the question regarding backup window.

In this case it stands to reason to let support engineer take a look at this issue.

Thanks.