Best way to create user backups for all servers?

[bbahnmiller]

All,

I have a request to setup user backups for all of our Unix servers. (The SA's want to be able to backup product directories just prior to upgrades. Other than that, don't ask...) I've been wondering what would be the best way to do this.

I figure there are 2 ways to do this - one policy with a user schedule and all the clients listed in that policy; or add a user schedule to every existing Unix policy.

The first option seems cleaner, possibly a little harder to maintain. My only concern is if I'm going to run into a limitation on the number of clients in a single policy. We have over 700 Unix clients... I could possibly split them up, but that would obviously take more maintenance. Since there is only one policy that would have the user backup schedule, the SA's would not have to specify the policy in their bpbackup command - added simplicity for them.

If there are some limits that this would run into, the second option would probably work just fine. But it would mean I would have to edit ALL of my policies.

Does anyone have any thoughts, recommendations?

Environment: NetBackup 7.1.0.3 and 6.5.5

       Thanks,

       Bryan

[Nicolai]

There is no limit of schedules for a single policy (I have one with 3500 schedules for Oracle backups)

Option one or two is a matter of taste :)

[bbahnmiller]

I really don't want to create thousands of schedules. (Ugh! Can't imagine 3500 schedules!) I'm going to try the single policy with many clients - 1 schedule. I'll see if I run into issues.

I know this can easily be scripted to add additional clients, which is the good thing. In the other solution the script gets a bit more complicated - search the policies for the client, then add the user schedule.

Thanks!

[Mark_Solutions]

I am not aware of any limit on the number of clients you can have in a policy

It just writes to a file in the class directory so cannot see why there would be any limit on this