Scheduler

[adam.pandi]

Hello,

We would like to suggest an improvement related to the JOB scheduler. Independently of the schedule, there could be a rule where the job can additionally be disabled or enabled on specific calendar days. This would override the existing schedule, because in some cases it may be necessary to define exceptions.

For example:

Tape backup
Weekly schedule: every Sunday
Monthly schedule: the first Sunday of every month

Due to the amount of data, both the weekly and monthly schedules cannot run on the first Sunday of each month, because they do not fit within the backup window. Therefore, it would be useful to disable the weekly backups on the first Sunday.

[Mildur]

Hi Adam,

If weekly and monthly are scheduled on the same day, only the monthly media set will be written to tape.
We don’t write two different GFS media sets from the same tape job on the same day.

From the Help Center – Schedule Overlap:

If the schedule for backup periods overlap, only the backup for the eldest media set will be archived. The media sets have the following priority: Yearly, Quarterly, Monthly, Weekly, Daily. For example, if "the first Sunday of January" is the date for the monthly, the quarterly and the yearly backup, the GFS job will create only the yearly backup; the monthly and the quarterly backups will be skipped.

Do you see issues with your current design, or was this more a question before deploying the tape jobs?

Best,
Fabian

[adam.pandi]

Hello Fabian,

Thank you for your quick answer.

Currently, in this situation, I use a manually defined schedule. I created separate jobs for the weekly and monthly backups and scheduled these jobs manually.

As a result, I am unable to disable a job when it overlaps with another scheduled job.

Regards,
Adam

[Mildur]

Hi Adam

May I ask, why you can't use GFS Media Pool and our Schedule? That would solve your challenges immediately.

Best,
Fabian

[adam.pandi]

Hi Fabian,

Yes, that is true, but this approach is somehow easier for me to follow. It may be a bit old-fashioned, but for me it feels cleaner.

I rotate WEEKLY and MONTHLY tape sets according to the schedule, so I can easily and safely track exactly what was written to each dedicated tape. Once the backup has completed, I can remove the tape and lock it away in a cabinet.

This way, I do not depend on a backup chain that is more difficult for me to track, and it does not cause any anomalies. I tried GFS earlier, but once the backup process got disrupted, and after that the backups were unclear for several days.

Can the following scenario be implemented with GFS?

A WEEKLY/MONTHLY tape set, where each week/month writes to a different set. Only that specific backup is stored on it, and I can remove it and lock it away in a cabinet, without any data from another backup chain on the same tape.

These issues are mostly unique, specific cases, and they may also be caused by my lack of sufficient knowledge of the proper configuration.


Regards,
Adam

[Mildur]

Hi Adam

Yes, you can disable "Append backup files to incomplete tapes" in the GFS Mediapool Settings together with "Export the following media sets upon job completion" in the Backup to Tape job settings. With this settings, each GFA Tape job session will use a new Tape.

To organize tape information in the backup console, you can also use Vaults.
For example, you can configure that all weekly tapes are moved into a vault called “Weekly”, and do the same for “Monthly”. If your tapes have barcode labels, that will also be very helpful to track which tape contains which backups. Just look up the Barcode label in the backup console, and then go and get your tapes with the required Barcode.

Best,
Fabian