Exclude backup

[Balachandran]

Hi,

We use Symentac Netbackup 7.1.0.4v. 

In my organisation they used to take a backup of C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts on every day.

Could you please tell me what is the need of the file?

[SymTerry]

Hello,

The hosts file is a file where Microsoft TCP/IP can be configured to search the local host table file, HOSTS, for mappings of remote host names to IP addresses. The HOSTS file format is the same as the format for host tables in the Version 4.3 Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) UNIX /etc/hosts file 

This is from Microsoft (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc751132.aspx)

You would want to back up the hosts files of all machines that have any configurations make to it.

[Mark_Solutions · Accepted solution]

That depends very much on whether you use it in your environment or not.

The hosts file is used for the server to identify other servers via their IP address.

By default it does not contain very much - just a local host loop back - but if your environment uses hosts files then it may contain other servers IP addresses in the form:

10.10.22.96        server1.domian.com       server1

as it is usually only 1kb i wouldn't worry about excluding it

[revarooo]

Agree, no point excluding it. It's so small. Explanations of it's use already made, but I'd want to back it up IF you have editted it.

[Balachandran]

Hi,

In the past 8 months, even for the server crash i don't see none of them restored or requested the HOSTFILE.

yes, the size of the file is so small. But If we know that we won't require that file, then there is no need to take the backup of the file.

But they configured it for some reason, actually i dont know why?

[Stumpr2]

Well the points are gone, but to answer your question as to why back it up everyday....

It may be there to be used for  a quick check to see if the backups are working.
Every server will have that file so backing it up is a way to prove that backups are running successfully on the client. The regular backups may hang or lockup but this simple backup of a static unopened file proves that every step of the backup system is working. Any failures of the regularly scheduled OS  full/incremental backups are then usually limited to something happening on the client itself.

I usually create a test policy of the actual production policy and change the filelist to be either /etc/hosts for unix flavored clients or C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts for window clients. Just to test if a simply backup can run successfully.