Group schedule policy in NBU

[liuyang]

Hi, my master server is NBU 7.0.1 on windows 2008 r2. I have a few clients (all are windows, NBU agent 7.0.1) which have the same backup schedule, e.g., backup window (7pm to 7am), full backup everyday. Is it possible to group the schedule together? I mean I only see one schedule and if I modify this schedule, schedules of all clients will change accordingly.

Thanks.

[Marianne · Accepted solution]

As Ed and Riaan explained in this post: https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/re-exclude-clients

All settings in a policy applies to all clients in that policy. If you need different schedules for a set of clients, put them in a new policy.

[liuyang]

Thanks for your replies. But my clients have different backup selections. Does it still apply?

[Marianne]

If clients have different backup selections, you most definitely need separate policies.

ALL parameters in Attributes, Schedules and Backup selection applies to ALL clients in a policy.

So the moment SOMETHING is different (Client/backup type, backup window, retention, pool, backup selection, etc.. etc..) you need a new policy.

Definition of a backup policy (extract from admin Guide I):

Policies define the rules that NetBackup follows when clients are backed up. A backup policy can apply to one or more clients. Every client must be in at least one backup policy. The best approach to configure backup policies is to divide clients into groups according to the backup requirements and archive requirements.
Then, create a policy for each group.

[Andy_Welburn]

to utilise exclude lists. But the veracity of this method would really depend upon the complexity of the backup selections.

e.g.

Client A drives:
C:\
E:\

Client B drives:
C:\
F:\

So policy backup selections would be:
C:\
E:\
F:\

which would necessitate exclude_lists of:
Client A: F:\
Client B: E:\

But, if you utilise multiple data streams, then you would still end up with 3 backup jobs per client (4 inc parent) as it would create these before it reads the exclude_lists, it's just that nothing would get backed up for the excluded selections.

For simplicity, I would go the separate policies as already suggested.

[Nicolai]

If you have different backup selection you need different policy's.

If you write 3 backup selection in one policy, Netbackup expect those path to be present on all client,  If not status code 71 will show up.

Update: Too late, Marianne was faster than me.