Backing up files created during the last four hours.

[Fedro_Ponce_de_]

I need to create a policy that will backUp files created or modified during the last 'X' hours (not days). Similar to a working set scenario but limiting it to an specific hourly period and not daily.

I can not do a incremental backUp since having to create the initial "Full" backUp of 8TB of data is almost impossible for US, we need to create a policy that will let us backUp every 'X' hours whatever files where added or modified during that time frame... we will not be faced to recover the "full" backup but, individual files backed up during certain time period.

How could I manage this?

[Ajit_Kulkarni]

Hello,

I would like to know if you have never taken Full backup of your data as its around 8 TB ?

Regards


NOTE : If we do not receive your reply within two business days, this post would be marked "assumed answered" and would be moved to "answered questions" pool.

[Fedro_Ponce_de_]

No, the full backUp is not being already taken. The application in question is a security app that is conected to several different web-cameras. All this cameras save the video to a group of files in a circular fashion for a week long period. We need to back-up only the generated or modified files for a given period and not the full file set. Since doing so will take prohibitibely long. So, we can assure that a small set of files will not be overwriten if we contraint ourselves to a given hourly peiord, backing up only the created or modified files. Any way, there is no need to fully recover the whole set of files, since in case of need only a limited period of time will be needed for a revision.

[Amruta_Purandar]

Hello,

You can create templates for policies wherein you can specify the time schedules. However you will need one baseline backup that is one full backup before you create subsequent backups.


NOTE : If we do not receive your reply within two business days, this post would be marked assumed answered and would be moved to answered questions pool.

[Fedro_Ponce_de_]

Hello,

Thank's, is there a way to create a backUp similar to a working set backup... that will only include files created in a particular day? Is something similar for a time period?

Am I correct with the working set backup? Will it only consider files created or modified in a particular day?

[Ashutosh_Tamhan]

When you create th backup policy you can set the working set backup method under the setting "general".


Regards,
Ashutosh

NOTE : If we do not receive your reply within two business days, this post would be marked assumed answered and would be moved to answered questions pool.

[Fedro_Ponce_de_]

The problem is that a Working set will work for a whole day (or days) period. But not for a user defined number of hours.

What I want to achieve is to create a "full" backUp of ONLY the files created or modified during an specified period of time, such as the last four hours previous to the back-up's job launch time.

I am not able to do an initial "full" backUp of the whole data since my current storage has about 8TB of data, so performing an initial full back-up will take prohibitibely long.

Besides, in this scenarrio the back-up is intended not for restoring the data in case of failure, but to be able to recover files modified during that period.

I think that if I elaborate on my scenario that will be clear.

This is a call center application, which records the conversation to HDD in WAV format. Each conversation correspond to a single file, and they are related to the information store via a SQL DB. The requirement is to be able to recover a single conversation in case it is necessary (mostly by a court rule). These conversations should be kept for up to two years.

As you can see, it is not a situation where the back-ups are inteded for recovering the state of the application. This conversations take up HDD storage so quickly that only a few weeks worth of data could be retained in the main storage, forcing the sysadmin to regularly delete "old" files.

A typical shift (about 8 hours) will generate about a 100 GB of voice data. Which should be backed up to tape before the next shift ends.

It is important to send to tape a whole shift of data, because that´s the way that it will be retrieved.. since a 100 GB of data could be stored in a single tape. So, if needed, a single tape would be required to retieve a particular conversation.

The whole schema depends on being able to back-up the data files generated during a particular shift. This why I need to be able to "select" only files created during that particular shift. thus the working set setting won´t do the trick.

[Fedro_Ponce_de_]

I have been testing the last few days with an idea...

We created a VB script that will be called from a batch file during the pre-job task.

This VB script loops through the data directory where de voice data files are generated, and creates a short-cut in another "BackUp" directory for such files that where modified during the curren shift period (delimited by the time when the back-up start).

This method correctly generated links to the files that should be backed-up. We expected that backing up this links would (I don't know why) back-up the original files.

Of course that did not work, I think we got messed up around setting the option "Back up files and directories by following junction points"... (sorry if I translated it badly since my installation in spanish) we mistakenly assumed that setting would let us back-up the oringinal file from it's shortcut.

Well, we did not considered to do a "copy" of these modified files via the script to an alternate path (and creating a full back-up of it) becase doing a 100 GB copy... would be both time consuming and would demand an extra 100 GB of HDD storage.

¿Any Ideas?

[ray_littlefie1]

Try this-

1.) Simulate a full backup using the ATTRIB command- "ATTRIB -A *.* " (use /s if subfolders are being used) This will reset the archive bits on all files just like a full backup would do.
2.) Create a backup using the incremental reset archive bit method. Schedule it daily using the Restart time Interval of 4 hrs.

Each backup will only backup the files created within the last four hours.

You should also consider using and Archive backup periodically which can automatically backup, verify, delete files based on a last accessed time (advanced properties of file selection GUI) to maintain adequate free disk space.

[Fedro_Ponce_de_]

If I understood correctly I sould run an incremental BackUp that will do an ATTRIB -A to the files as soon as it ends (post-job task) so that all files will be considered backed up except for those really created or modified between that time period?

[ray_littlefie1]

No.

Run a ATTRIB -A command against the file structure. outside of backup exec. Run it one time to reset all archive bits against all files. This sets the baseline of all files not to be backed up.

Then run Incremental backups (reset archive bit) every four hours. Only the files created within the four hour window will be backed up during each backup.