Frequency based backups with different retentions

[LT2013]

I've been using calendar-based policies in NBU 7.5. So within a policy, I have Daily, Weekly and Monthly schedules where each is calendar-based, with differing retentions:

Every Mon-Thu for Dailies

Every Friday for Weeklies (except for the first Friday)

First Friday for Monthlies

I just realized that a request was made to only do fulls for certain servers on Saturday. So a copy of the policy was made, with only those servers and the backup window modified to start on Saturday morning. Problem is the calendar was still set to Fridays...so no backups.

I'm thinking switching to frequency-based to avoid this in the future but I'm drawing a blank on the frequency setup (if its even possible) to allow for the different retentions between the first Saturday (Monthly) and the other Saturdays (Weekly...shorter retention) within a single policy.

THanks

[John_Snodgrass]

Yes it is, however with a frequency schedule, you can only controll it by a certain number of weeks, so the date of the monthly backup would drift over time becuase some months have 5 Fridays for example.  So you need to take that into consideration. 

To answer your basic question, the schedule with the greatest frequency will take presidenace on a day that both met the backup window..  For example, a full that runs once every 4 weeks, would run in place of a full that runs every 1 week for a given day.  I'm not 100% sure if a calendar based, the first Friday for example would take presidenance over a weekly based frequency based backup.

[ontherocks]

Within a single policy you can create two different schedules with different retentions.

[Deb_Wilmot]

Great comments John!

There is a wonderful section starting on page 559 in the Adminitrators Guides Volume 1 (7.5 version is at: http://www.symantec.com/docs/DOC5157) about how scheduling works.

On page 702 is a great section on "How open schedules affect calendar-based and
frequency-based schedules".  This explains everything you need to know about scheduling. 

Hopefully this is helpful!

Deb

[Marianne · Accepted solution]

Please see David Chapa's article about Frequency Scheduling:

NetBackup Frequency Based Scheduling 

I am still 'old school' and prefer to use Frequency for daily and weekly schedules and Calendar schedules for monthly and yearly schedules - all in the same policy.
Works well.

[LT2013]

Thanks for all the replies.

John...that is exactly my concern with respect to the monthly backup.

Marianne...excellent doc! So if I setup daily incrementals and weekly fulls on a frequency based schedule (and hedge against my aforementioned issue), I would do a calendar based schedule for the monthly full. and on that first saturday of the month, where I have the weekly frequency-based job scheduled as well as the calendar full, the latter should take precedence as it has not run in several weeks.