How will Symantec's Veritas NetBackup be affected by the Energy Policy Act and changes to daylight savings time starting in March of 2007
Details:
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 will result in a change to the beginning and end of Daylight Savings Time (DST). These changes will take effect starting in March of 2007. Daylight savings time will now begin at 2am local time on the second Sunday in March (March 11th, 2007) and end at 2am on the first Sunday in November (Nov. 4th, 2007).
Caveats regarding NetBackup and daylight savings time:
NetBackup relies on the system time being set correctly in order to work properly. If the system time is off it can result in issues such as; backups starting at the wrong time, start and stop times being reported incorrectly and the potential for missed backups. Symantec recommends consulting with the operating system vendor to determine what patches may be necessary to ensure that daylight savings time occurs at the correct times for 2007.
As general practice, Symantec recommends that all master and media servers be checked to ensure the system time is accurate after the transition to and from daylight savings time. The Activity Monitor should also be checked for any backups that appear to be missing due to the transition to daylight savings time. Any missed backups should then be run manually.
Known scheduling issues for the NetBackup 6.0 release:
There are no known scheduling issues with the transition to or from daylight savings time. Symantec recommends the system be upgraded to at least NetBackup 6.0 Maintenance Pack 4 (MP4) which resolves other scheduling issues that are unrelated to daylight savings time.
Known scheduling issues for the NetBackup 5.x releases:
There is a known scheduling issue with daylight saving time. This occurs only with the "spring forward" transition from DST.
To be affected by this issue, all of the following conditions must apply to a backup policy:
The NetBackup master server must be running a version previous to NetBackup 6.0
*AND* the policy must be configured with a schedule that is frequency-based
*AND* the schedule must be configured with a frequency value that is an exact multiple of 24 hours
*AND* the schedule must be configured with a backup window that must start between 00:00 and 01:00 on the "spring forward" day
*AND* the schedule must become due to run within it's window at some time after 01:59 on the "spring forward" day
If all of the above conditions are met, then this policy/schedule combination will erroneously be considered "not due" for the duration of the backup window. The next time this backup window opens, this policy/schedule combination will run.
This issue is scheduled to be fixed in the NetBackup 5.0 Maintenance Pack 7 (MP7) and the NetBackup 5.1 Maintenance Pack 6 (MP6) releases. To download these NetBackup 5.x releases, once they become available, visit the Support Web site at:
http://www.symantec.com/enterprise/support/downloads.jsp?pid=15143
To work around the known NetBackup 5.x scheduling issue take the following steps.
1. Identify any backup schedules with a backup window that begins between 00:00 and 01:00 on a Sunday. This can be done by running the bppllist -allpolicies -U command from the master server and redirecting the output to a file. The resulting file can be scanned for any policies that contain an entry for Sunday under the Daily Windows: section of the policy.
2. Write down the names of any policies and schedules that are affected by this issue.
3. It will then be necessary to change the backup window to open at 01:10 or later. This should prevent any scheduling issues from appearing on the "spring forward" day of daylight savings time.
4. Then on March 12th, the backup window can be changed back.
Known issues for the NetBackup Java Administration console (all versions):
All currently supported versions of NetBackup (5.0, 5.1, 6.0) use the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) version 1.4.0 for the NetBackup Java Administration console. The JRE does not use the operating systems time zone database. Instead it has it's own implementation of time zone information and DST rules.
Version 1.4.0 of the JRE does not contain the updated time zone information for 2007 and will cause the NetBackup Java Administration console to switch to DST on the wrong day. This will cause any reports in the NetBackup Java Administration console to report the wrong start and end times for jobs in the Activity Monitor. The NetBackup Java Administration also passes time zone information to other NetBackup commands such as bpplinfo, bpschedule, bpplsched, bppllist, and bpplschedrep using the -tzo setting. This can potentially impact the scheduling of backups.
The upcoming NetBackup 6.5 release has an upgraded JRE version 1.4.2, which has accounted for the new DST rules. Hence this issue would not exist in NetBackup 6.5. There are workarounds to solve the problem for the NetBackup 6.0 and 5.x releases. Refer to TechNote 286497, found below, in the Related Documents section for additional information on updating the JRE time zone information.
