Forum Discussion

tejas9024's avatar
tejas9024
Level 3
11 years ago

NDMP backups - prioritizing streams in backup selection

Hi All,

We are taking NDMP backups from EMC VNX filer. In the backup policy, we have about 105 streams out of which 8 streams run at a time(due to stream limitation on the datamover). Among the 105 streams in backup selection, we have about 15 streams which are huge in size and hence require a longer time to complete a full backup. So, once the backup starts, we are manually selecting these 15 streams and increasing their job priorities so that the backup of these streams starts first. We are doing this because the backups are not being run in the order of backup selection list. I would like to know if there is some way by which this can be done without manually changing job priorities for the required streams. Please provide your inputs on this.

Master Server: Windows 2008 R2

NBU Version: 7.5.0.4

 

7.5
Backing Up
Backup and Recovery
NDMP Option
NetBackup
Windows Server (2003-2008)
  • RamNagalla's avatar
    RamNagalla
    11 years ago

    if that is the case, you can create 3 streams for the 15 Volumes policy ( considerng the size) and 5 streams for rest of the volumes.

    you can play accross this number of streams for policy considring the size.. but at the end you can stick with 8 streams all together.

  • RamNagalla's avatar
    RamNagalla
    Moderator
    11 years ago

    the best way is to create a new policy with the 15 streams and schedule them to start early than the one that is currently exists.

    you can also give the high prority in the policy for the 15 stream one than the current one in order to make sure the once the current one start it will not push back the 15 stream policy.

  • SymTerry's avatar
    SymTerry
    Level 6
    11 years ago

    Nagalla beat me to it,

    If need priority for certain backup selections, put them in their own policy and give that a higher priority. The Job priority attribute specifies the priority that a policy has as it competes with other policies for resources. 

  • Andy_Welburn's avatar
    Andy_Welburn
    Level 6
    11 years ago

    Ditto on the above 2 excellent suggestions.

    As everything else is equal for both policies (or more if you split this down further) with regards to resources, the higher priority will ensure that those jobs get preference as long as you do schedule them to start a little earlier - they will not stop nor suspend a lower priority job if the latter 'got there first'.

  • tejas9024's avatar
    tejas9024
    Level 3
    11 years ago

    Thank you everyone for your responses.

    The problem in doing this is that we have limited number of streams that can be used for NDMP backups (only 8 streams can run at a time). If we create a separate policy with those 15 streams, we will not be able to split the 8 streams among these 2 policies efficiently.

    In the current scenario, we have dedicated all 8 streams to that policy which has about 105 backup selections. Full backup for this policy starts at 4 PM Friday and ends by Monday 6 AM.

  • Andy_Welburn's avatar
    Andy_Welburn
    Level 6
    11 years ago

    But you're not changing the number of streams in any way, only spreading them across 2 policies & ensuring that 15 of them get priority over the resources.

  • RamNagalla's avatar
    RamNagalla
    Moderator
    11 years ago

    if that is the case, you can create 3 streams for the 15 Volumes policy ( considerng the size) and 5 streams for rest of the volumes.

    you can play accross this number of streams for policy considring the size.. but at the end you can stick with 8 streams all together.