No worries - it seems to be a bit of a grey area for most people. I did
research on it a few weeks ago but most of the research has been pushed
out of my head to make room for other stuff.

What I can remember was that S_S (or S_C_C) is supposed to backup DHCP
(amongst a lot of other stuff) and is implied by A_L_D. However, A_L_D
also tried to backup the entire file system of all the drives ('local'
drives but some may not actually be local) on that server. This probably
means that there's some doubling up for some files.

In our environment, we have loads of tape capacity so tend to just back
everything up, just in case. However, open file issues can probably make
some backups very inefficient so we're slowly working out (or at least
trying to) what can be excluded in terms of open files.

Cheers,

Tim
 

-----Original Message-----
From: bob944 [mailto:bob944 at attglobal.net] 
Sent: Thursday, 22 June 2006 10:47 AM
To: Wilkinson, Tim; veritas-bu at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: RE: [Veritas-bu] NBU 6, Windows, excluding files

> Bob - thanks for that; that's a pretty comprehensive answer to my 
> questions).

Di nada.  Unfortunately, that may have been 99% of what I know about
Windows.  :-)

> Another question is if you backup A_L_D, which implies SYSTEM_STATE 
> (or SHADOW_COPY for Win2k3), if I was to exclude the DHCP db 
> directories, would the policy still get the DHCP backups from S_S 
> (even if S_S is implied in A_L_D, is it actually a separate backup to 
> actual file system backups)? If that was the case then everything that

> gets backed up be S_S could be excluded from A_L_D.

Yep, I'm out of my depth here.  I have no idea how System_State/Shadow
Copy work, nor MS's DHCP and why there isn't an underlying file that can
simply be opened read-only and backed up like any other file.  I try to
be as much a Windows-free zone as possible.  Sorry I can't be any help
on this, Tim.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: bob944 [mailto:bob944 at attglobal.net]
> Sent: Wednesday, 21 June 2006 10:39 PM
> To: veritas-bu at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
> Cc: Wilkinson, Tim
> Subject: RE: [Veritas-bu] NBU 6, Windows, excluding files
> 
> > We are backing up some databases (SQL and SharePoint) and
> using agents
> 
> > to backup the actual dbs and also backing up the entire
> systems using
> > ALL_LOCAL_DRIVES.
> > The A_L_D backup jobs meet a few open db files and can't
> back them up
> > (which is expected) and I'm wondering whether I can exclude the 
> > directories where the dbs are stored from the policy (which
> is backing
> 
> > up A_L_D) and not affect the agent backups.
> > My guess this is as simply achieved by specifying which policy to 
> > exclude from but just want to confirm that this won't
> affect the agent
> > (db) backups.
> 
> No need to make them policy[.sched]-specific; excluding files from a 
> filesystem backup has no effect on an agent backup which backs up the 
> data logically:  an exclude_list with /oradata/*dbf won't interfere 
> with the Oracle agent's RMAN backup of the data in those .dbf files.  
> Be clear whether (in this example) the dbf files will not be backed up

> in any filesystem backups or have a specific *clude_list arrangement 
> for, say, the prod-ora-cold filesystem backup.
> 
> Exclude directories only if a) they include sufficient other 
> useless-to-back-up objects that specifying them is irksome,
> b) there is
> formal agreement that nothing in that directory or its subdirectories 
> will be backed up and c) the data owner has demonstrated that he can 
> recover that application without need of the excluded structure.  (I 
> never trust the DBAs on this.  When you have to recover that critical 
> database/application to new hardware after a disaster and the DBA 
> finds that he really did need setup or control files that he 
> guaranteed you didn't need to back up, it doesn't matter that the 
> error was demonstrably his if the company is out of business because 
> the database is kaput.)
> 
> > What files/folders (on Windows) do people often exclude?
> 
> From memory:
> 
> Any *.mdb, *.ldb, *.edb, ... that are backed up by another means or 
> are not necessary to preserve across rebuilds.
> 
> All of the perf*.dat stuff.
> 
> And the default excludes mentioned in the SAG, of course (and ensure 
> the system owner knows this).
> 
> Rule:  force backup-and-restore operations to investigate every status

> 1, every single time, determine the files not backed up, go to the 
> data/system owner for approval to exclude or ignore, document the 
> process to all.  The annoyance to all concerned usually results in 
> quickly cleaning up all the stat 1 problems.
> 
> 
>