Differential Incremental Running a Full Backup

[Les_Denniss]

Hello

We have a clustered Windows fileserver. Each drive has its own backup IP address assigned to it which follows the cluster if moved but everything stays on one side. After a successful synthetic full backup (528211835 KB) a differential incremental runs (15715783 KB), but when the next differential incremental starts it runs a full backup, currently (240176128 KB) why is this?

Hope someone can supply an explanation, please?

Thanks in advance!

[Nicolai]

Are all schdules in the same policy (they must be)?

The second diff - did it use another storage unit than the first full and first diff ?

Please post the policy definion as well: bppllist [policyname] -L

[Les_Denniss]

Hi Nicolai

Thanks for your help

All schedules are in the same policy. The differential incrementals write to the same disk

Please see output for bppllist - Thanks

Policy Name:      << I have removed >>
Options:           0x0
template:          FALSE
audit_reason:         ?
Names:             (none)
Policy Type:       MS-Windows (13)
Active:            yes
Effective date:    02/06/2004 12:39:12
Client Compress:   no
Follow NFS Mnts:   no
Backup netwrk drvs:no
Collect TIR info:      yes, with move detection
Mult. Data Stream: no
Perform Snapshot Backup:   no
Snapshot Method:           (none)
Snapshot Method Arguments: (none)
Perform Offhost Backup:    no
Backup Copy:               0
Use Data Mover:            no
Data Mover Type:           2
Use Alternate Client:      no
Alternate Client Name:     (none)
Use Virtual Machine:      0
Hyper-V Server Name:     (none)
Enable Instant Recovery:   no
Policy Priority:   95500
Max Jobs/Policy:   Unlimited
Disaster Recovery: 0
Collect BMR Info:  no
Keyword:           (none specified)
Data Classification:       -
Residence is Storage Lifecycle Policy:    no
Client Encrypt:    no
Checkpoint:        yes
      Interval:    180
Residence:         << server name >>_PureDisk
Volume Pool:       Servers
Server Group:      *ANY*
Granular Restore Info:  no
Exchange Source attributes:              no
Exchange DAG Preferred Server: (none defined)
Application Discovery:      no
Discovery Lifetime:      0 seconds
ASC Application and attributes: (none defined)
Generation:      194
Ignore Client Direct:  yes
Enable Metadata Indexing:  no
Index server name:  NULL
Use Accelerator:  no
Optimized Backup:  no
Client/HW/OS/Pri/DMI/CIT:  << client name >> Windows-x64 Windows2008 0 0 0 0 ?
Include:           J:\*
Schedule:              Differential-Incremental
  Type:                INCR (1)
  Calendar sched: Enabled
   Included Dates-----------
      Monday, Week 1
      Tuesday, Week 1
      Wednesday, Week 1
      Thursday, Week 1
      Friday, Week 1
      Monday, Week 2
      Tuesday, Week 2
      Wednesday, Week 2
      Thursday, Week 2
      Friday, Week 2
      Monday, Week 3
      Tuesday, Week 3
      Wednesday, Week 3
      Thursday, Week 3
      Friday, Week 3
      Monday, Week 4
      Tuesday, Week 4
      Wednesday, Week 4
      Thursday, Week 4
      Friday, Week 4
      Monday, Week 5
      Tuesday, Week 5
      Wednesday, Week 5
      Thursday, Week 5
      Friday, Week 5
   Excluded Dates----------
      No specific exclude dates entered
      No exclude days of week entered
  Retention Level:     1 (2 weeks)
  u-wind/o/d:          0 0
  Incr Type:           DELTA (0)
  Alt Read Host:       (none defined)
  Max Frag Size:       0 MB
  PFI Recovery:        0
  Maximum MPX:         4
  Number Copies:       1
  Fail on Error:       0
  Residence:           << server name >>_PureDisk
  Volume Pool:         (same as policy volume pool)
  Server Group:        (same as specified for policy)
  Residence is Storage Lifecycle Policy:         0
  Schedule indexing:   0
  Daily Windows:
   Day         Open       Close       W-Open     W-Close
   Sunday      000:00:00  000:00:00
   Monday      016:00:00  025:00:00   040:00:00  049:00:00
   Tuesday     016:00:00  024:55:00   064:00:00  072:55:00
   Wednesday   016:00:00  024:55:00   088:00:00  096:55:00
   Thursday    016:00:00  024:55:00   112:00:00  120:55:00
   Friday      016:00:00  025:00:00   136:00:00  145:00:00
   Saturday    000:00:00  000:00:00
Schedule:              Synthetic_Monthly_Full
  Type:                FULL (0)
  Calendar sched: Enabled
    Allowed to retry after run day
   Included Dates-----------
      Friday, Week 5
   Excluded Dates----------
      No specific exclude dates entered
      No exclude days of week entered
  Retention Level:     0 (2 days)
  u-wind/o/d:          0 0
  Incr Type:           DELTA (0)
  Alt Read Host:       (none defined)
  Max Frag Size:       0 MB
  Synthetic:           1
  Checksum Change Detection: 0
  PFI Recovery:        0
  Maximum MPX:         1
  Number Copies:       1
  Fail on Error:       0
  Residence:           << server name >>_monthly_duplication
  Volume Pool:         (same as policy volume pool)
  Server Group:        (same as specified for policy)
  Residence is Storage Lifecycle Policy:         1
  Schedule indexing:   0
  Daily Windows:
   Day         Open       Close       W-Open     W-Close
   Sunday      000:00:00  000:00:00
   Monday      000:00:00  000:00:00
   Tuesday     000:00:00  000:00:00
   Wednesday   000:00:00  000:00:00
   Thursday    000:00:00  000:00:00
   Friday      023:00:00  046:00:00   143:00:00  166:00:00
   Saturday    000:00:00  000:00:00
Schedule:              Synthetic_Weekly_Full
  Type:                FULL (0)
  Calendar sched: Enabled
    Allowed to retry after run day
   Included Dates-----------
      Friday, Week 1
      Friday, Week 2
      Friday, Week 3
      Friday, Week 4
   Excluded Dates----------
      No specific exclude dates entered
      No exclude days of week entered
  Retention Level:     0 (2 days)
  u-wind/o/d:          0 0
  Incr Type:           DELTA (0)
  Alt Read Host:       (none defined)
  Max Frag Size:       0 MB
  Synthetic:           1
  Checksum Change Detection: 0
  PFI Recovery:        0
  Maximum MPX:         1
  Number Copies:       1
  Fail on Error:       0
  Residence:           << server name >>_weekly_duplication
  Volume Pool:         (same as policy volume pool)
  Server Group:        (same as specified for policy)
  Residence is Storage Lifecycle Policy:         1
  Schedule indexing:   0
  Daily Windows:
   Day         Open       Close       W-Open     W-Close
   Sunday      000:00:00  000:00:00
   Monday      000:00:00  000:00:00
   Tuesday     000:00:00  000:00:00
   Wednesday   000:00:00  000:00:00
   Thursday    000:00:00  000:00:00
   Friday      023:00:00  046:00:00   143:00:00  166:00:00
   Saturday    000:00:00  000:00:00

[Les_Denniss]

I have also checked the override policy storage selection so it writes to the same disk - thanks

[Nicolai]

Do you have a tradittional full to begin with ?

[Les_Denniss]

Yes I do have a traditional weekly full. I had this problem last week so a run a weekly full then differential incrementals but the same happened. So I ran a synthetic full and started again.

[Nicolai]

Did the next diff incremental fall on a Friday ?

did you remove the traditional full from the policy then - I can only see synthetic fulls.

[Les_Denniss]

I have is to run differential incremental monday - friday so it should run another differential tonight

[Les_Denniss]

highlighted is weekly full this is a standard full backup. I then removed this from the policy and added synthetic_full shedule and ticked the synthetic full check box

[Marianne]

The bppllist output above shows 2 Synthethic Full schedules - no traditional Full.

The traditional Full must be in the same policy.

It is normal for this traditional Full to not have any open windows so that it needs to be kicked off manually to start off with, and then allow the Diffs and Synthethic Fulls to run as per the schedules.

If the traditional Full was run in another policy, it will not be applied to the schedules in this policy.

As per the first line in Nicolai's excellent post above:

Are all schdules in the same policy (they must be)?

[Les_Denniss]

I created 4 schedules on the policy

Weekly_Full = 1st full backup which completed successfully - then removed shedule as no longer needed to run it.

Continued with:

Daily Differential - Differential Incremental

Synthetic_Weekly_Full - as is says synthetic weekly full

Synthetic_Monthly_Full - as it says a synthetic monthly full

This is how it now looks - are you saying I should never remove the weekly_full shedule even if it is no longer used? - Thanks for your help

[Marianne · Accepted solution]

Apologies - missed your 2-month-old reply....

Yes. The 'traditional' full needs to be kept in the same policy. 
This is how NBU knows that the Diff must be based on this Full backup. 
Just remove the backup window for the traditional full (to prevent automatic kick-off) and leave it in the same policy.

[Les_Denniss]

Hi Marianne

I decided to set up each policy with the traditional backup included without a schedule as suggested above. The problem has not re occured.

Thanks for your help!