Using Policies

[Nick_Terry]

I'm trying to understand how policies work in Backup Exec 10 and am wondering whether they are suitable to use in light of the way I configure backup jobs on the servers I look after. What I do is to create a separate selection list for each component that gets backed up (e.g. Shadow Copy Components, Exchange Mailboxes, Exchange Infostore, SQL Database, Full File Backup (C, D...) etc.). I then create a separate job for each selection list with the necessary settings such as overwrite on first job and eject tape on last job. Each job is scheduled with a gap of 5 minutes in between (e.g. 20.00, 20.05, 20.10 etc.) and the priority is configured so the jobs are guaranteed to run in the right order. Every job is a full backup and runs every day of the working week (Mon-Fri). The backup scheme follows a 10 tape rotation schedule (Mon-Thu, Friday 1, 2 and 3 and Month 1, 2 and 3) where each day fits onto a single tape. In light of this I have tried creating the same thing using policies but as far as I can see you can't seem to be able to break the jobs down into individual components. It seems you can only have one job running each evening which is combined with a single selection list which has to include every component. I like having a job for each component as it makes it much easier when troubleshooting backup issues. Is it possible to do this with policies or are they for use in different situations?

Thanks for any help you can give.

[Amruta_Purandar]

Hello,

Policies provide a method for managing backup jobs and strategies. Policies contain job
templates, which are job attributes that define how and when Backup Exec processes a
job. Templates specify the devices, settings, and schedule for a job, but do not include the
selections to be backed up. To create jobs, combine a policy with a selection list.

After you combine a selection list with a policy, Backup Exec automatically creates a job
for each template in the policy. For example, if a policy contains three templates, Backup
Exec will create one job for each template, for a total of three jobs. Polices are reusable, so
you can create a single policy and combine it with several different selection lists.

As you have mentioned that you have several selection lists, you can create policies for each of them.


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