BE 2012 Exclude dates not available for single job

[scottt709]

I have just upgraded to BE2012 and looks fine and initial backups have been running fine. My question is in regards to the schedule exclude dates. It seems you set up a default exclude date and all the backup sets use it. I run multiple jobs to tape and disk. I want to exclude the tape backups on long weekends and holiday but continue to run the disk backups. If I setup an exclude date it excludes them all.

Scott C

[VJware]

Thats right, excluding dates are now at media server level & not job level.. applies only to scheduled jobs & not stand-alone jobs

[scottt709]

So if this is the case for holidays if I want to skip tape backups I must have to skip my backups to disk as well or purchase an expensive robotic tape drive unit. These are my choices or manually run the backups. Is this not incredibly short sighted ????

[pkh]

Agree. Server-level exclude dates is good for holidays, but removing exclude dates for individual jobs is a bad idea.

I have created an Idea to bring back exclude dates for individual jobs.  If enough people vote for the idea, it might be revived in some future release.

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/ideas/exclude-dates-individual-jobs

[scottt709]

I opened a case and after a week or so the response from the backline group was the software was operating as designed. Interesting the videos promoting theBE 2012 assured the viewers that none of the features of the previous version were removed. The tech that handled my case is trying to find away for me to put this on the wish list.

[Johanne1]

Yes, very short sighted on the part of Symantec!

[RockClimb]

I am not sure what they were thinking when they released 2012. The date exclusion is a huge mistake. We will be going back to 2010. Also you can not granularly select resources when trying to group servers in a single backup job to tape.

I hope Symantec reads the posts and works this out. The loss of features is terrible.

I want to backup 2 servers to tape in one job and be able to select individual drives or system state for one of the servers. Not possible!

[Johanne1]

BE2012 wants you to create groups where you select the servers you want to add to the group then what type of backup (Full, Incremental or Differential), all this in one window, then you must open another window, by selecting Edit Backups, for each server in the group to select the data you want to backup.

I have 4 servers and have created 3 groups for different of bakup jobs and each server appears in multiple groups.

It is possible.

[scottt709]

Are you saying if you Group the Servers this way you can manage the exclude dates. ????

[Johanne1]

Sorry, no.  I was only commenting on the ability to backup servers in multiple groups and scenarios.

[pkh]

There is no requirement to group your servers.  You group your servers to ease the task of creating jobs.  Instead of creating jobs for individual servers, you can use the group of servers to to create the jobs at one go.

[Jason_Lee]

What in what reality would removing the ability to exclude specific dates and/or specifing a recurring schedule to exclude at the job level make sense?

This will be the 2nd option that puts a strike against 2012. 

I have no problems with the interface, but the feature and tyring to duplicate our backups in 2012 is getting extremely frustrating.

[Mandar_Sahasrab]

Hi Jason,

Thanks for your inputs. We have received feedback on absence of specific exclude dates at job level and we are actively working on the same.

The other suggestion on ability to specify recurring exclude dates has also been captured.

I would request you to refer to Elizabeth's post titled "Schedule Challenges" on the following post for more insight.

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/backup-exec-2012-single-backup-multiple-servers

Regards,
Mandar

[Jason_Lee]

For those reading this, basically Elizabeth offers to do a Webex session so you can see possible changes to scheduling options on a beta version of a yet-to-be realeased update to 2012.  She asks for you to directly message her to set this up... https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/user/elizabeth-teffner