cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

I'm use to NetBackUp, how do you set retention period on backup?

Michael_Pietrza
Level 3
Hi there everyone,

I have been using NetBackUp for about five years and became very proficient in it's use. I recently started another job and they are using BackUpExec 10.

It seems that the two products are VERY different and it has been very confusing trying to figure out the in's and out's of this product.

On NetBackUp, I enjoyed the fact that for each backup policy (backup job), I could assign a retention period to both the fulls and the incrementals.

It seems here that BackUpExec assigns media overrides and appends to media and gives no real way to expire backup files themselves?!?!

Can anyone help me in explaining to me how I can create my backup jobs to backup to disk and expire after a given period of time. In backing up to disk, I want only one backup file per job. Meaning, I want to try and make Mondays backup one file, Tuesdays backup one file etc.

I also want to set an expiration date for each of those backups so I know when they will be removed from the storage media.

Thanks in advanced if anyone can help me. I truly appreciate it!

Michael
San Diego State University
2 REPLIES 2

ray_littlefie1
Level 6
Yeah, I miss Netbackup some days.

Backup Exec does not have the capability to expire media and the catalog entries. Instead, you must manipulate the append/overwrite behavior of the backup jobs using specified media sets (media sets = retention time), in conjunction to using recyclable media vs. scrach media so that you media gets overwritten, as opposed to expiring at the desired time.

This is a good document relating to the overall behavior:
http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/192265.htm

So, in regards to your question, you can set the B2D file size by right clicking on the folder within the Devices tab, and choosing Properties -> Configuration and choosing the Maximum size.

I'm not sure exactly what you'e trying to accomplish but here is an example of creating B2D files for each day of the week:

Create a media set with an Overwrite Protection Period of six days, append period of one. Create 7 B2D folders- Monday thru Sunday. You would create backup jobs using this media set and using the B2D folder for the day of the week. On the first week, each backup would write to a different folder, each folder would contain one file. On the second week, each job would overwrite last weeks job. So the media never expires, it just gets overwritten. If you decreased the Overwrite protection period, the B2D files would be capable of being overwritten, but unless you direct a job to the file it remains on disk. So in this example, the disk would always have a 7-day supply of backups.

That's just one example, there are many other ways to achive the same result.

There is one last way that does truly expire the media- Right click and choose erase :)

Michael_Pietrza
Level 3
Hi there Ray! Let me start off by expressing my deepest thanks for posting.

Your reply is very helpful indeed. My original post probably had you scratching your head so I'm glad that someone could help me out. Nice to hear someone misses NetBackup as well. Hopefull they will merge the two products before not too long.

Anyways, I think you explained it for me very well. I guess I am trying to mimic Netbackup as much as possible.

What I would ultimately like to accomplish would be, say, 1 server has backups that are retained for 5 days, and each nights backup is one media. (i guess this goes to my further confusion is the difference between media sets and the configuration option for "maximum number of backup sets per Backup-To-Disk-File.)

With netbackup, a single backup job could, as you know, result in numerous files but what are "backup sets per backup to disk files"?

Well, thanks again for the post Ray. I am going to dive back into backup exec tonight and try to run some tests and see what I can accomplish.

Thanks again!

Michael