Excluding a drive in policy with "ALL_LOCAL_DRIVES"

[bgibson]

Hi all,

We are running Windows NetBackup 6.5.5

We have a policy for a 2008 64 bit domain controller that has ALL_LOCAL_DRIVES set so we get a system state of the server. The domain controller also has a Seagate USB drive attached as E: because I am super paranoid and am using Windows Backup to schedule system state backups to this E: drive. Is it okay for me to add E:\ to the "Windows Client" -> "Exclude Lists" on that policy with the ALL_LOCAL_DRIVES parameter set?

There is no use in us backup up the system state on the E: drive if we are already getting a System State through the NetBackup policy.

[J_H_Is_gone · Accepted solution]

You don't exclude via a policy  but by client.

So you can open the client properties of that server and exclude it there.

They policy will then do all local drives for all clients in the policy, but will exclude the E drive for that one client.

[Andy_Welburn]

& it does backup the USB/E: drive? Not something I've ever tried so personally wasn't sure if was classed as a "local" drive or not - I know it is but.....!

As far as the theory of the exclude lists, as already mentioned this would be done at the client level, but you can further restrict it to just the policy or even further to a schedule in the policy so that the E: drive isn't excluded on any other policy for that client that you may have (unlikely?).

One word of 'caution' - if you exclude any drive in an ALL_LOCAL_DRIVES policy with multiple data streams enabled then you may come across "anomalies" i.e. the streams are determined before the exclude_lists are read so, with multiple data streams, you will end up with a job/stream for the excluded drive which will be 'empty' as it were & may, or may not, error out with "none of the paths exist" or some such.

[bgibson]

Hi guys,

Thanks for the response. I have yet to fire off a test of this policy but it is scheduled to run tonight so I should know soon if there are any issues. I did do the exclusion at the client level, I did this by going into the Admin Console them selecting "Host Properties" -> "Clients" -> double clicked on the domain controller -> "Windows Client" -> "Exclude Lists" and I added the E:\ drive for that client for all of the policies (this is the only policy it is part of). I do not have the "Allow multiple data streams" check in the policy so I don't think that problem you mentioned will come into play.

[Andy_Welburn]

policy so I don't think that problem you mentioned will come into play."

Cool! Should be good to go then. One job, drive excluded & no errors .....

[Stumpr2]

The GUI is pretty easy to use but if the excludes start to get complicated and you want to change a lot of clients with different types you may want to consider using a registry editor and save the exclude configurations.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\VERITAS\NetBackup\Currentversion\Config\Exclude