Veritas-bu

[Veritas-bu] whats wrong with my calendar based backup

2006-06-14 12:11:02
Subject: [Veritas-bu] whats wrong with my calendar based backup
From: Jonathan.Marks at ftc.usda.gov (Marks, Jonathan - Fort Collins, CO)
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 10:11:02 -0600
Support had me stop Netbackup and remove the file and then start
Netbackup.  I was told it would recreate that "pempersist" file.  It did
recreate the file but did not help get my fulls to run.  I was using
nbpemreq -predict -date XX/XX/XXXX XX:XX:XX with different dates and
times to try and forecast what would run.  I was very careful to use the
-updatepolicies after any changes I made.  This is important to note
since there is a small possibility that some of the errors I saw after
the initial failure was from the nbpemreq command.  I tried to wait and
see if the fulls ran at all, but after making a few changes such as the
pempersist and waiting a week and then trying something else, I had to
change my policies in order to have data backed up.  

I was always able to manually run the policy.  Which I did for all
affected policies when I discovered the issue.

-Jonathan Marks


-----Original Message-----
From: Tristan Ball [mailto:Tristan.Ball at vsl.com.au] 
Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2006 6:33 PM
To: Marks, Jonathan - Fort Collins, CO; bob944 at attglobal.net;
veritas-bu at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: RE: [Veritas-bu] whats wrong with my calendar based backup

I've had similar experiences with 6.0mp2, both calender and frequency
based schedules.

It seems that the PEM gets confused about which schedules are
running/have run. For us, the fix has been to shut down netbackup, then
edit the bin/bpshed.d/pempersist file, removing the entries (and
subsequent blank lines) for the schedules that were miss-behaving.

T. 


 
---
Tristan Ball
System Administrator
Vision Systems
+61-3-9211-7064
 

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces at mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of Marks,
Jonathan - Fort Collins, CO
Sent: Wednesday, 14 June 2006 9:52 AM
To: bob944 at attglobal.net; veritas-bu at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] whats wrong with my calendar based backup

 I do not have documentation for my specific error.  I called in Case
280-593-264 to Veritas support for help with my issue.  I have used
calendar based scheduling for 3 years now and have used it on 5.0 mpX,
5.1 mp2-3 and now 6.0mp2.  When I upgraded from version 5.1mp3 to 6.0mp2
all of my Full_library backups that crossed midnight stopped spawning
jobs.  There were no errors, but policies that met the Full spanning
midnight criteria just did not run.

I had a cumulative policy start windows Mon-Fri 4:00-10:00 and the
calendar settings checked for re-occurring Mon-Fri.  I also had a full
policy with start window Fri 20:00 - Sat 23:59 and the calendar settings
checked for Sat.  I dropped the Fri start window and removed the Friday
calendar schedule from the cumulative.  I then added the Friday check
boxes to the calendar schedule for full.  I stopped everything and
restarted but I could not get any fulls to run.

It seems to me and according to eh SAG vol1 that I should have had two
fulls running one on Friday late and one sometime on Saturday.  Neither
occurred. 

I tried just about everything to get at least one full backup to work
with the start windows set to span midnight.  Support had me try many
things too.  If I checked the full's calendar schedule for all days
things would run in the window I had set.  Is that the way it is
supposed to work?  Should you need to check all the days to get a full
just because you have the midnight start window crossed.  That was not
my understanding.  I then modified the schedule and set the full start
window to Fri 20:00-23:59 and removed the Saturday Check boxes from the
re-occurring schedule, bing things started to work.  I discussed this
with support and was told to change everything to not cross the midnight
boundary.  This boundary issue for lack of a better description was
affecting 26 policies here.

It always seemed like the policy thought that the other day Fri or
Saturday what ever day it was not was the one who owned the start
window.  It did not create two jobs as one may expect.  It created none.

The SAG vol1 says that if you want a policy to cross midnight on a
single backup attempt you should use Frequency based scheduling with a
frequency of 1 day instead. 

I was unable to get 6.0mp2 calendar configured with fulls crossing the
boundary line.  I tried new policies but still ran into the same
problems.  Support was able to duplicate the problem.  I asked for a
document or something that would state the condition that caused the
fulls not to run but received a "We will continue looking at this, do
you mind if we close the call"  Any suggestion on things to try I am
still game.  I think the midnight issue must be some strange thing I
missed and would be over joyed the figure out what was wrong.  I
responded since the issue sounded the same as mine and the user may have
made what ever strange checks I did.  I for lack of time only provided
the solution and the go away response I was given from Symantec.


-Jonathan Marks


-----Original Message-----
From: bob944 [mailto:bob944 at attglobal.net]
Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2006 12:54 PM
To: veritas-bu at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: RE: [Veritas-bu] whats wrong with my calendar based backup

> If you are using Netbackup 6.0 you can not have your start window 
> cross midnight.  I was told that it is bad practice.  I think 
> Netbackup has gone goofy.

And your documentation is what, exactly? 

If this is fact, _I_ want to know about it; please provide a pointer to
your documentation and I'll apologize for the next sentence.  If this
extraordinary claim is an area of NetBackup you don't yet understand,
but you are happy to spread it as fact on a world-wide mailing list
without knowing if it's true or not, do you think that's useful?  

Backup windows can span any number of midnights.  (Ref: SAG Volume I.)
If you don't thoroughly understand calendar-based scheduling, the
behavior of calendar-based-schedule backup windows spanning midnight may
surprise you.  Since that behavior usually isn't what users intend, best
practice for many is not to span midnight when using calendar-based, in
which case calendar-based works as the user expects.  (Ref:  every
person I ever knew who tried moving from freq to cal schedules.)



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