Differential incremental running as full backup

I made the changes suggested.

I'm not sure how I can change the full backups to a frequency schedule instead of calendar since we need the two following -- 1 monthly full backup with 1 year retention, 3 full backups with 3 week retention.

Here's the new policy schedule, can you let me know if this looks any better?

It has full backups every weekend. (one is 1 year retention, the rest are 3 weeks)
Differential backup monday-thursday.

C:\Windows\system32>cd C:\Program Files\Veritas\NetBackup\bin\admincmd

C:\Program Files\Veritas\NetBackup\bin\admincmd>bppllist X_Shares -U
------------------------------------------------------------

Policy Name:       X_Shares

  Policy Type:         MS-Windows
  Active:              yes
  Effective date:      02/25/2015 19:00:50
  Backup network drvs: no
  Collect TIR info:    no
  Mult. Data Streams:  no
  Client Encrypt:      no
  Checkpoint:          no
  Policy Priority:     0
  Max Jobs/Policy:     Unlimited
  Disaster Recovery:   0
  Collect BMR info:    no
  Residence:           LAS
  Volume Pool:         NetBackup
  Server Group:        *ANY*
  Keyword:             (none specified)
  Data Classification:       Platinum
  Residence is Storage Lifecycle Policy:    no
  Application Discovery:      no
  Discovery Lifetime:      28800 seconds
  ASC Application and attributes: (none defined)

  Granular Restore Info:  no
  Ignore Client Direct:  no
  Enable Metadata Indexing:  no
  Index server name:  NULL
  Use Accelerator:  no
  Optimized Backup:  no
  HW/OS/Client:  Windows-x64   Windows2008   XXX.corp.tlcinternal.us

  Include:  Shadow Copy Components:\User Data\Distributed File System Replicatio
n\DfsrReplicatedFolders\Shares

  Schedule:              FULL_MONTHLY
    Type:                Full Backup
    Calendar sched: Enabled
     Included Dates-----------
        Saturday, Week 1
     Excluded Dates----------
        No specific exclude dates entered
        No exclude days of week entered
    Synthetic:           0
    Checksum Change Detection: 0
    PFI Recovery:        0
    Maximum MPX:         8
    Retention Level:     8 (1 year)
    Number Copies:       1
    Fail on Error:       0
    Residence:           (specific storage unit not required)
    Volume Pool:         (same as policy volume pool)
    Server Group:        (same as specified for policy)
    Residence is Storage Lifecycle Policy:         0
    Schedule indexing:   0
    Daily Windows:
          Saturday   00:00:00  -->  Saturday   22:00:00

  Schedule:              FULL_WEEKLY
    Type:                Full Backup
    Calendar sched: Enabled
     Included Dates-----------
        Saturday, Week 2
        Saturday, Week 3
        Saturday, Week 4
        Saturday, Week 5
     Excluded Dates----------
        No specific exclude dates entered
        No exclude days of week entered
    Synthetic:           0
    Checksum Change Detection: 0
    PFI Recovery:        0
    Maximum MPX:         8
    Retention Level:     2 (3 weeks)
    Number Copies:       1
    Fail on Error:       0
    Residence:           (specific storage unit not required)
    Volume Pool:         (same as policy volume pool)
    Server Group:        (same as specified for policy)
    Residence is Storage Lifecycle Policy:         0
    Schedule indexing:   0
    Daily Windows:
          Saturday   00:00:00  -->  Saturday   22:00:00

  Schedule:              DIFFERENTIAL
    Type:                Differential Incremental Backup
    Frequency:           every 1 day
     Excluded Dates----------
        No specific exclude dates entered
        No exclude days of week entered
    PFI Recovery:        0
    Maximum MPX:         8
    Retention Level:     1 (2 weeks)
    Number Copies:       1
    Fail on Error:       0
    Residence:           (specific storage unit not required)
    Volume Pool:         (same as policy volume pool)
    Server Group:        (same as specified for policy)
    Residence is Storage Lifecycle Policy:         0
    Schedule indexing:   1
    Daily Windows:
          Monday     22:00:00  -->  Tuesday    04:00:00
          Tuesday    22:00:00  -->  Wednesday  04:00:00
          Wednesday  22:00:00  -->  Thursday   04:00:00
          Thursday   22:00:00  -->  Friday     04:00:00

As I mentioned in previous posts, I have a total of 4 policies running on this server. 3 of the policies (configured the old way with individual different policies) appear to be working fine. (see screenshot of full weekend backup, then differential).

I had to stop the _Shares one because it was doing a full backup again when it was suppose to do a differential.

We haven't seen evidence that a prededing full backup for the combination of "policy + schedule + client + selection" actually exists.

Here's the deal, you will continue to have incrementals run as full, until a full actually completes, if any of "policy or schedule or client or selection" have changed since any previous most recent full, i.e. if they have been removed and re-added, been renamed, and/or certain policy options changed, and/or certain policy options changed and then any backup run and the policy options reverted...

...if any of these actions have taken place, then NetBackup will not have a "full position" upon which to base the next incremental.

.

My advice:  You'll have to wait for the next full to complete - and then with no further policy/schedule/client/selection changes, and then does the next incremental still run as a full ?   Come back to us if the problem persists after this.

I tried creating a completely new policy last Friday and kicked off a full backup over the weekend. (full biweekly backup with a 3 week retention), then one differential dailys. (I left the old policies alone on this server with the 4 different differential policies and they are working as expected).

However, the LAFS01_Shares2 policy is still running differentials as a full backup. full backup was ~ 6 TB and completed on Sunday @ 6PM. Yesterday's differential policy is nearly at 2 TB and growing.

Not yet, but will configure this now and report back to see if anything changes. Does this mean I need to run another full backup after making this change before running the differentials again?

Earlier you said "It is set to archive bit."

Have you done as Marianne suggests above?

Modify the client's Host Properties to "Run Incrementals" "Based on timestamp".

Here's the technote: http://www.veritas.com/docs/000020086

Yes!

It has been observed that when running DFSR backups, neither the Full schedule or Differential Incremental schedule types are successfully clearing the Archive Bits at the end of the job.  This causes subsequent incremental backups to backup as much data as a Full.

Thanks. I'll report back next Monday since I have to run the full.  I'm not allowed to run the full backup during weekdays since it takes ~40 hours to complete and it locks up the VSS service causing DFS data not to replicate.

Backups are now working after creating a new policy and setting it to time stamp instead of archive bit.