scheduling question

[Kevin_Walker]

I have looked through the forums and through the manuls, but I have not found an answer to my question.

My organization runs 3 types of jobs for every server: daily, weekly, and monthly.

Daily runs M-TH, Weekly runs on Friday, and Monthly runs the last Friday of the month.

Certain months will cause the Weekly and the Monthly job to be scheduled on the same Friday, which is my issue.

I know I can open the Weekly job and "exclude" that Friday.

I could create a Template rule within a policy to have the Monthly job to supersede the Weekly job, but the Weekly job will still run.

I have not found an option to say "when 2 jobs are scheduled for the same day, run this one and exclude this one".

Ideas?

Thanks for your time.

[Philip_Pearson]

You need to use policy template rule "if start times conflict then monthly supercedes weekly".

The jobs need to be scheduled to start at the same time to make the start times conflict.

It may be good to put the start window for the weekly so that it closes before the monthly has finished.

[Isaac_Gonzalez]

hi, I was wondering the same thing....superceding it doesn't cause it to not run after the monthly completes, is there no other alternative than adjusting the start window of the weekly job?

thanks,

Isaac

[thegoolsby]

Isaac,

The only alternative is to have the scheduling times differ.

If the start times are different, then the job scheduled to start second should stay in a 'queued' status until the first job completes.

This would allow both of the jobs to run.

Collin Goolsby
Technical Support Engineer
Symantec Corporation
www.symantec.com

[Isaac_Gonzalez]

sorry if i confused you by my post, but what i meant is that i do not want the weekly to run at all the night my monthly runs...does this make sense?

[Ken_Putnam]

Set the start times the same, and specify that the Monthly superceeds the Weekly

[Isaac_Gonzalez]

that doesn't work, even though the monthly does supercede the weekly and runs first, the weekly runs immediately after the monthly is finished

[thegoolsby]

Issac,

What Ken states is correct, and it should work as he states. Unfortunately, there is a defect in 11.d where the supersede rule is not working as designed and the job which should be superseded is still being run. The only workaround at the moment is manually edit the schedule and not use the supersede rule.

Engineering is aware of the issue, and there has been a tech note written, and it should be published in the very near future.            

For the time being, please manually set your backup schedule.

[Isaac_Gonzalez]

I have a support contract actually...so I would appreciate a fix for this....I guess I'll be giving them a call.

thanks,

Isaac

[Isaac_Gonzalez]

well its been almost 7 months since i posted this and now I finally am calling support.....does anyone know if there is a fix for this yet?

[David_Bond]

Hi,

Works fine here. I have a policy set up for the following. Daily incremental (every day, mon - sun), Weekly full, run every Friday, then a monthly full, ran on the last friday of every month. The backups are scheduled to start no earlier that 23:00 and no later that 22:59:59. After the monthly or weekly backup has completed, I have set them to be duplicated to tape. I have also set 2 rules for the conflicts.

If start time conflict, Full Monthly Backup supersedes Full Weekly Backup.

If start time conflict, Full Weekly Backup Supersedes Incremental Daily Backup.

With this, my daily backups run every day except on fridays, which the weekly backup runs, unless it the last friday of the month, which my monly backup runs. The other backups dont run after, only 1 backup runs.

After the Policy was created, I generated my jobs from it.

Hope this helps

David

[Isaac_Gonzalez]

can I ask what version, build number and hotfix level you are currently running?

thanks,

Isaac

[David_Bond]

Hi,

It has worked with Backup Exec 11d Build 6235 various hotfixes, worked up to sp1 with hotfix 21 and 22 I think it was. Then I upgraded to 7120, and applied all hotfixes (upto 12) and it appears to be still working fine. I had to recreate all my jobs again, as it screwed up on the upgrade (as i also changed the disk configuration before my upgrade).

David

[Isaac_Gonzalez]

hmmm, i will try and apply all the hotfixes(i think i'm only missing sp1) for the older build....i have already tried recreating the policy and all jobs to no avail....symantec has acknowledged this as a defect and have an article about this and still NO FIX!....it's strange why you aren't experiencing it...what OS are you running?

We're win2k3 server/SP1 standard edition with latest patches....the policies used to work fine with v.10d but i guess this was among the many things that the upgrade to 11d broke. It just hasn't bothered me enough to call support on it....well now it does bother me and i feel like my company basically wasted money on the support agreement.

support was pretty useless by the way and said that everything was working fine....until i pointed them to my forum post.....

and then they put me on hold for about 10 mins(obviously talking to tier 2) and admitted that this was a defect and pointed me to the kb article about it...no fix is available.

here is the kb article: http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/288665.htm

[David_Bond]

Hi,

I have it installed on Server 2003 R2 with SP2. It strange that it logged as a fault, but i don't experience it. Looked in my logs again, and it says my Friday full backups ran on Friday at 23:00 and then the next backup started on Saturday at 23:00 for my daily incremental. Will see what happens tonight with the backups and report back tomorrow (have to work tomorrow).

David

[David_Bond]

Hi,

Just checked, and the Friday backup only had the full backup run, so the incrementals didnt run after it, so its working fine for me in build 7170.

David

Message Edited by David Bond on 08-11-200708:29 AM

[Isaac_Gonzalez]

ok good to know....possibly need to upgrade to sp2 for win2k3srv and upgrade to the latest build for buexec....the symantec tech support said that the defect is still present in the 7170 build too....

If anyone else experiences this issue, please post here as well

[Matthew_Brooks]

Hi Isaac,

     Just as an FYI - we are also experiencing this problem. We are currently at 10D and are debating whether it's worth the upgrade to 11D seeing that this issue still remains unresolved. We have some complicated backup schemes and for veritas to solve this issue would be a huge help. From what I'm reading in the forums however, it seems to be a low priority. Has anything worked for you? (The service packs / updates?)

Quarterly supersedes Monthly

Monthly supersedes Weekly

They all run in specific order.

Here is their support doc

http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/288665.htm

Matt

Message Edited by Matthew Brooks on 10-05-2007 01:18 PM

[Isaac_Gonzalez]

well i did install sp1 for backup exec 11d(i'm still on the older build, not build 7170) and tomorrow night i run my monthly so I'll monitor it just to make sure the weekly doesn't fire off...i wouldn't recommend that you upgrade to 11d to fix that issue, as it will probably cause you other grief unfortunately.... I doubt that it will fix my issue though as i don't think veritas is too concerned about this issue, but it bothers my company since they have to spend extra money burning tapes every month.

Message Edited by Isaac Gonzalez on 10-05-2007 02:16 PM

[Isaac_Gonzalez]

upgrading to build 7170 and applying all relevant patches fixed this for me...guess symantec has no clue that this defect could be resolved by upgrading to build 7170 since their support doc lists this as a defect.....support had no clue either....figures. Looks like we won't be renewing our support since its pretty much been useless up to this point.