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_Johan's avatar
_Johan
Level 3
12 years ago
Solved

MSSQL Backup schedule question- full/Full Differentail and transaction log backup

Hi, My question regarding the Full/Full Differential Schedule scenario in netbackup 7.5: I will run a full backup every Friday and then full differential backup on monday-thursday. imagine that the full backup job on Friday 12/4 and the full differential backup on monday 15/4 succeeds, then, on tuesday 16/4 the differential backup fails, on wednesday 17/4 the full differential succeeds. if i would need to restore the database to the backup taken on wednesday 17/4 - will that be ok? will that backup contain all the Changes between monday 14/4 and wednesday 17/4 (because the backup on tuesday failed)? Or is it required to run a full backup after the failed backup? also, would there be a different answer if we backup transaction logs on the database every 30 minutes? today we take Daily Full backups on many databases and that takes much time, thats why im looking at a different approach. thx /johan
  • We have a customer with a large SQL database where daily full backup is taking too long.

     

    They use NetBackup policies to schedule Weekly Full Backups, Daily Differential Backups and regular Transaction log backups. They run hourly log backups, but have also requested the ability to schedule more regular log backups, for example every 15 minutes.

    To schedule backups more often that every one hour (e.g. every 30 minutes), the schedule needs to be changed from cmd:

    bpplschedrep <POLICY_NAME> <SCHEDULENAME> -freq 1800

    To get back to your question about the effect of failed Diff backup on Tuesday: 
    My understanding is that Wednesday's backup will include all changes since last successful backup (Monday).

    I agree with Mark - you would be fine.

    Just one more thing: please ensure that your environment is patched up to NBU 7.5.0.5. There was a bug in the SQL restore GUI up to version 7.5.0.4:

    Extract from NBU 7.5 LBN
    (ET2990617) <<Fixed in 7.5.0.5>> <<Fix Downloadable>> When a transaction log backup image for restoring from the SQL Agent is clicked on, the agent crashes.
     http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH201595 

     

     

  • You would be fine in your scenario - if there was an issue NetBackup will tell you and fail and invalid differential backup

    Most of my customers take full backups nightly and run transaction log backups every 1 or 2 hours during the day to keep them under control and speed up the nightly full backups - this seems to work really well.

    Hope this helps

  • thx for the reply! i misunderstood the meaning of Full differential for SQL backups in "netbackup languare", thougt it was the same as an incremental in "backup exec language", when coming from BE this is somewhat confusing with the different name of the same stuff..:)
  • We have a customer with a large SQL database where daily full backup is taking too long.

     

    They use NetBackup policies to schedule Weekly Full Backups, Daily Differential Backups and regular Transaction log backups. They run hourly log backups, but have also requested the ability to schedule more regular log backups, for example every 15 minutes.

    To schedule backups more often that every one hour (e.g. every 30 minutes), the schedule needs to be changed from cmd:

    bpplschedrep <POLICY_NAME> <SCHEDULENAME> -freq 1800

    To get back to your question about the effect of failed Diff backup on Tuesday: 
    My understanding is that Wednesday's backup will include all changes since last successful backup (Monday).

    I agree with Mark - you would be fine.

    Just one more thing: please ensure that your environment is patched up to NBU 7.5.0.5. There was a bug in the SQL restore GUI up to version 7.5.0.4:

    Extract from NBU 7.5 LBN
    (ET2990617) <<Fixed in 7.5.0.5>> <<Fix Downloadable>> When a transaction log backup image for restoring from the SQL Agent is clicked on, the agent crashes.
     http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH201595 

     

     

  • Thanks again for confirming! i have set up the transaction logs with the bpblschedrep command and its working fine with the 1800 second frequency, but actually, i can't see why symantec have 1 hour as the most frequent Schedule, sure, this command works but the info in the policy (gui) is somewhat misleading when it says "0" and you get a text box saying that "0" is not a valid freg every time you open the policy and that you need to rerun the command if you change something in the policy. also, Thanks for pointing out the bug about the log restore, i will upgrade our environment asap!