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Differential incremental running as full backup

bbot
Level 4

Client running 7.6.0.4

Master server running 7.6.0.1

Schedule:
Monday, tuesday, wednesday and thursday set to differential incremental backup. 3 week retention, 1 day frequency.

Monthly full backup with 1 year retention once a month
Full backup every other 2 weeks with 3 week retention. (full backup happens once every 2 weeks)
 

This past Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday ran full backups consecutively although the policy is set to differential incremental.

 

Monday's job ended at 10:04 PM, and Tuesday job started at 10:05 PM the same day, so I thought it was an issue with time overlap. However, Tuesday job ended at 3:19 PM, and started at 10 PM and still ran a full backup. (time overlap was set to 60 minutes).

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

Marianne
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If you don't want our advice, then keep the schedules your way. Your screenshot shows that you have killed a Monday (Diff) schedule. If you feel that a Diff is backing up too much data, then maybe look at using Timestamp for Incr on this client rather than Archive Bit.

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20 REPLIES 20

Marianne
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Please show us policy config : bppllist ( policy-name ) -U And tell us when last a full backup successfully completed for this policy.

sclind
Moderator
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   VIP   

Does having the master server at a lower level thna the client perhaps cause this?

watsons
Level 6

Can you give us the job status of when each schedules run , including the last full schedule?

Were they all ending in status 0 , or some has status 1?

In host properties of lasfs01.corp,  is it set to use archive bit or timestamp?

Also just saw your backup selection is a DFSR , how big is that folder? According to admin guide, there is certain recommendation for policy setup - please check it out , look for "About Microsoft DSFR backups"

 

Nicolai
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You got 4 Differential Incremental Backup schedules, you should have one.

A diff incremental will automatick kick off when frequency is set to 1 days and no schedules with higer retention are about to run 

 

bbot
Level 4

@watsons - all finished with status 0. It is set to archive bit.

This folder is about 4 TB.

@nicolai - if I have a full weekly that has a 2 week retention, and a differential policy with 2 week retention, will this be an issue? Does the retention have to be greater?

Marianne
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I get totally confused by such complex schedules. And it seems NBU as well. Please get rid of multiple Inc schedules as per Nicolai's suggestion. Also try to configure only Frequency or Calendar schedules in one policy. Please also note that Calendar schedules do not 'play nice' with windows crossing midnight. There should be no need to have a backup window this long: Saturday 00:00:00 --> Monday 03:00:00 A backup window is a START window, i.e. the time during which a backup is allowed to start. It does not need to finish within the backup window. Please try and simplify backup schedules - less is better and less room for confusion. Try to standardise on Schedule types - calendar or frequency.

Nicolai
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Always ensure the full backup is retained 1- 2 weeks longer than the incremental.

Incremental backup is tied up to the full backup, if you have no full backup as a reference you may not be able to restore data until the next full

Picture this:

F = Full 

i = Incremental

What you should have :  F i i i i i i F i i i i i i 

Now if the full is expired before incremental :  i i i i i i  F i i i i i i

Basically there is only ONE full backup to perform a entire system restore. if that backup is damaged, data loss will occur.

Hope i managed to picture the problem :)

 

 

Mark_Solutions
Level 6
Partner Accredited Certified

As said those schedules are way too complicated .. and don't actually what they / you suggest.

The BIWeekly only actually runs once a month with the monthly running the other time to give the effect of a full backup every 2 weeks.

The timing is pretty close too - so i would make the biweekly one have a retention of 4 weeks to be fully sure and then just one one differential incremental backup schedule with a window of 2200 to 0400 for each of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and a frequency of 7 hours to make sure it is always ready to run.

bbot
Level 4

It appears the full ran on Tuesday, and Monday based on the amount of data of backed up. (Monday and Tuesday are suppose to be incremental).

The last scheduled full backup happened 2 weekends ago

Then differential incremental backups monday-thursday.


Policy Name:       LASFS01_Shares

  Policy Type:         MS-Windows
  Active:              yes
  Effective date:      02/25/2015 19:00:50
  Backup network drvs: no
  Collect TIR info:    no
  Mult. Data Streams:  no
  Client Encrypt:      no
  Checkpoint:          no
  Policy Priority:     0
  Max Jobs/Policy:     Unlimited
  Disaster Recovery:   0
  Collect BMR info:    no
  Residence:           LAS
  Volume Pool:         NetBackup
  Server Group:        *ANY*
  Keyword:             (none specified)
  Data Classification:       Platinum
  Residence is Storage Lifecycle Policy:    no
  Application Discovery:      no
  Discovery Lifetime:      28800 seconds
  ASC Application and attributes: (none defined)

  Granular Restore Info:  no
  Ignore Client Direct:  no
  Enable Metadata Indexing:  no
  Index server name:  NULL
  Use Accelerator:  no
  Optimized Backup:  no
  HW/OS/Client:  Windows-x64   Windows2008   lasfs01.corp

  Include:  Shadow Copy Components:\User Data\Distributed
n\DfsrReplicatedFolders\Shares

  Schedule:              FULL_MONTHLY
    Type:                Full Backup
    Calendar sched: Enabled
     Included Dates-----------
        Saturday, Week 1
     Excluded Dates----------
        No specific exclude dates entered
        No exclude days of week entered
    Synthetic:           0
    Checksum Change Detection: 0
    PFI Recovery:        0
    Maximum MPX:         8
    Retention Level:     8 (1 year)
    Number Copies:       1
    Fail on Error:       0
    Residence:           (specific storage unit not requi
    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:
          Saturday   00:00:00  -->  Sunday     23:00:00

  Schedule:              FULL_BIWEEKLY
    Type:                Full Backup
    Calendar sched: Enabled
     Included Dates-----------
        Saturday, Week 3
     Excluded Dates----------
        No specific exclude dates entered
        No exclude days of week entered
    Synthetic:           0
    Checksum Change Detection: 0
    PFI Recovery:        0
    Maximum MPX:         8
    Retention Level:     2 (3 weeks)
    Number Copies:       1
    Fail on Error:       0
    Residence:           (specific storage unit not requi
    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:
          Saturday   00:00:00  -->  Monday     03:00:00

  Schedule:              MONDAY
    Type:                Differential Incremental Backup
    Frequency:           every 1 day
     Excluded Dates----------
        No specific exclude dates entered
        No exclude days of week entered
    PFI Recovery:        0
    Maximum MPX:         8
    Retention Level:     2 (3 weeks)
    Number Copies:       1
    Fail on Error:       0
    Residence:           (specific storage unit not requi
    Volume Pool:         (same as policy volume pool)
    Server Group:        (same as specified for policy)
    Residence is Storage Lifecycle Policy:         0
    Schedule indexing:   1
    Daily Windows:
          Monday     22:00:00  -->  Tuesday    04:00:00

  Schedule:              THURSDAY
    Type:                Differential Incremental Backup
    Frequency:           every 1 day
     Excluded Dates----------
        No specific exclude dates entered
        No exclude days of week entered
    PFI Recovery:        0
    Maximum MPX:         8
    Retention Level:     2 (3 weeks)
    Number Copies:       1
    Fail on Error:       0
    Residence:           (specific storage unit not requi
    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:
          Thursday   22:00:00  -->  Friday     04:00:00

  Schedule:              TUESDAY
    Type:                Differential Incremental Backup
    Frequency:           every 1 day
     Excluded Dates----------
        No specific exclude dates entered
        No exclude days of week entered
    PFI Recovery:        0
    Maximum MPX:         8
    Retention Level:     2 (3 weeks)
    Number Copies:       1
    Fail on Error:       0
    Residence:           (specific storage unit not requi
    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:
          Tuesday    22:00:00  -->  Wednesday  04:00:00

  Schedule:              Wednesday
    Type:                Differential Incremental Backup
    Frequency:           every 1 day
     Excluded Dates----------
        No specific exclude dates entered
        No exclude days of week entered
    PFI Recovery:        0
    Maximum MPX:         8
    Retention Level:     2 (3 weeks)
    Number Copies:       1
    Fail on Error:       0
    Residence:           (specific storage unit not requi
    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:
          Wednesday  22:00:00  -->  Thursday   04:00:00

bbot
Level 4

I made the changes suggested.

I'm not sure how I can change the full backups to a frequency schedule instead of calendar since we need the two following -- 1 monthly full backup with 1 year retention, 3 full backups with 3 week retention.

Here's the new policy schedule, can you let me know if this looks any better?

It has full backups every weekend. (one is 1 year retention, the rest are 3 weeks)
Differential backup monday-thursday.

 

C:\Windows\system32>cd C:\Program Files\Veritas\NetBackup\bin\admincmd

C:\Program Files\Veritas\NetBackup\bin\admincmd>bppllist X_Shares -U
------------------------------------------------------------

Policy Name:       X_Shares

  Policy Type:         MS-Windows
  Active:              yes
  Effective date:      02/25/2015 19:00:50
  Backup network drvs: no
  Collect TIR info:    no
  Mult. Data Streams:  no
  Client Encrypt:      no
  Checkpoint:          no
  Policy Priority:     0
  Max Jobs/Policy:     Unlimited
  Disaster Recovery:   0
  Collect BMR info:    no
  Residence:           LAS
  Volume Pool:         NetBackup
  Server Group:        *ANY*
  Keyword:             (none specified)
  Data Classification:       Platinum
  Residence is Storage Lifecycle Policy:    no
  Application Discovery:      no
  Discovery Lifetime:      28800 seconds
  ASC Application and attributes: (none defined)

  Granular Restore Info:  no
  Ignore Client Direct:  no
  Enable Metadata Indexing:  no
  Index server name:  NULL
  Use Accelerator:  no
  Optimized Backup:  no
  HW/OS/Client:  Windows-x64   Windows2008   XXX.corp.tlcinternal.us

  Include:  Shadow Copy Components:\User Data\Distributed File System Replicatio
n\DfsrReplicatedFolders\Shares

  Schedule:              FULL_MONTHLY
    Type:                Full Backup
    Calendar sched: Enabled
     Included Dates-----------
        Saturday, Week 1
     Excluded Dates----------
        No specific exclude dates entered
        No exclude days of week entered
    Synthetic:           0
    Checksum Change Detection: 0
    PFI Recovery:        0
    Maximum MPX:         8
    Retention Level:     8 (1 year)
    Number Copies:       1
    Fail on Error:       0
    Residence:           (specific storage unit not required)
    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:
          Saturday   00:00:00  -->  Saturday   22:00:00

  Schedule:              FULL_WEEKLY
    Type:                Full Backup
    Calendar sched: Enabled
     Included Dates-----------
        Saturday, Week 2
        Saturday, Week 3
        Saturday, Week 4
        Saturday, Week 5
     Excluded Dates----------
        No specific exclude dates entered
        No exclude days of week entered
    Synthetic:           0
    Checksum Change Detection: 0
    PFI Recovery:        0
    Maximum MPX:         8
    Retention Level:     2 (3 weeks)
    Number Copies:       1
    Fail on Error:       0
    Residence:           (specific storage unit not required)
    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:
          Saturday   00:00:00  -->  Saturday   22:00:00

  Schedule:              DIFFERENTIAL
    Type:                Differential Incremental Backup
    Frequency:           every 1 day
     Excluded Dates----------
        No specific exclude dates entered
        No exclude days of week entered
    PFI Recovery:        0
    Maximum MPX:         8
    Retention Level:     1 (2 weeks)
    Number Copies:       1
    Fail on Error:       0
    Residence:           (specific storage unit not required)
    Volume Pool:         (same as policy volume pool)
    Server Group:        (same as specified for policy)
    Residence is Storage Lifecycle Policy:         0
    Schedule indexing:   1
    Daily Windows:
          Monday     22:00:00  -->  Tuesday    04:00:00
          Tuesday    22:00:00  -->  Wednesday  04:00:00
          Wednesday  22:00:00  -->  Thursday   04:00:00
          Thursday   22:00:00  -->  Friday     04:00:00

bbot
Level 4

As I mentioned in previous posts, I have a total of 4 policies running on this server. 3 of the policies (configured the old way with individual different policies) appear to be working fine. (see screenshot of full weekend backup, then differential).

I had to stop the _Shares one because it was doing a full backup again when it was suppose to do a differential.

Marianne
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited Certified
If you don't want our advice, then keep the schedules your way. Your screenshot shows that you have killed a Monday (Diff) schedule. If you feel that a Diff is backing up too much data, then maybe look at using Timestamp for Incr on this client rather than Archive Bit.

Nicolai
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP   

You need to let Netbackup do its work. If it think it need a new full backup, don't cancel it because it will try a full backup again.

With the new schedules the diff schedule may think it is missing a reference to a full, and therefor be backing up everything. So did you change the schedules between the full and diff schedule. The details of the activity monitor will mention if it's missing a reference to a full.

Please check policy configuration - schedule in the screen dump should say "DIFFERENTIAL" insted it say "MONDAY" - the name of the old schedule setup

sdo
Moderator
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Partner    VIP    Certified

We haven't seen evidence that a prededing full backup for the combination of "policy + schedule + client + selection" actually exists.

Here's the deal, you will continue to have incrementals run as full, until a full actually completes, if any of "policy or schedule or client or selection" have changed since any previous most recent full, i.e. if they have been removed and re-added, been renamed, and/or certain policy options changed, and/or certain policy options changed and then any backup run and the policy options reverted...

...if any of these actions have taken place, then NetBackup will not have a "full position" upon which to base the next incremental.

.

My advice:  You'll have to wait for the next full to complete - and then with no further policy/schedule/client/selection changes, and then does the next incremental still run as a full ?   Come back to us if the problem persists after this.

bbot
Level 4

I tried creating a completely new policy last Friday and kicked off a full backup over the weekend. (full biweekly backup with a 3 week retention), then one differential dailys. (I left the old policies alone on this server with the 4 different differential policies and they are working as expected).

However, the LAFS01_Shares2 policy is still running differentials as a full backup. full backup was ~ 6 TB and completed on Sunday @ 6PM. Yesterday's differential policy is nearly at 2 TB and growing.

 

 

bbot
Level 4

Not yet, but will configure this now and report back to see if anything changes. Does this mean I need to run another full backup after making this change before running the differentials again?

Will_Restore
Level 6

Earlier you said "It is set to archive bit."

Have you done as Marianne suggests above?

Modify the client's Host Properties to "Run Incrementals" "Based on timestamp".

Here's the technote: http://www.veritas.com/docs/000020086

 

Will_Restore
Level 6

Yes!

It has been observed that when running DFSR backups, neither the Full schedule or Differential Incremental schedule types are successfully clearing the Archive Bits at the end of the job.  This causes subsequent incremental backups to backup as much data as a Full.

bbot
Level 4

Thanks. I'll report back next Monday since I have to run the full.  I'm not allowed to run the full backup during weekdays since it takes ~40 hours to complete and it locks up the VSS service causing DFS data not to replicate.