Veritas-bu

Re: [Veritas-bu] Backup Policy - Responsibility for adding client into NBU

2009-02-17 18:41:01
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Backup Policy - Responsibility for adding client into NBU
From: A Darren Dunham <ddunham AT taos DOT com>
To: veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2009 23:27:15 +0000
On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 04:01:40PM -0000, WEAVER, Simon (external) wrote:
> Question is this - who is responsible for ensuring any new Servers get
> backed up into your Backup Environment? Sometimes I think its easy to
> blame the NBU admin, but how do they know what should or should not be
> backed up.
> 
> Does anyone have any process or routine in place or regular checks with
> their System Admins to make sure the backup client lists have not
> changed or need new servers backed up?

I have two general concepts that I tend to use or create at sites.

#1 Backed up data reports
I don't use error reports all that often.  I've been bitten more often
by data not even trying to be backed up (rather than trying and
failing).  So I have scripts that cross-check filesystems in the catalog
against the configuration.  Stuff in the config that doesn't get in the
catalog causes warnings to go off.

#2 Lots of stuff gets monitored
Maybe I've been fortunate, but most of the places I've been have had
adequate monitoring for servers.  They want to know when it goes down.
So I write scripts that cross-check the items being monitored with the
configuration.  If something is added to monitoring, but not to backup,
I'll get to know about it and ask questions.  

While I used monitoring as the example for #2, it's often the case that
there's some authoritative thing that can be queried.  DNS or LDAP
maybe.  Or NIS automount maps...  Maybe it doesn't catch 100% of
necessary data, but it's a great start.

-- 
Darren
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