Netbackup for Sybase - Cumulative backups and scripting

[rcdauria]

Hey guys,

We are working with VERITAS Consulting Services to setup a Sybase 15.7 backup in an important customer in Brazil and while talking to the customers DBAs, two important questions have arised:

1-Adaptative Sybase Enterprise 15.7 SP100 (pretty old, released in May/2013) initated the support of cumulative backups. The SAP docs are pretty clear about how simple and straight forward cumulative backups are. We could run a cumulative backup by issuing this isql command:

isql dump database MyDB cumulative
source: https://goo.gl/RrwJ91

which is very similar to the full and transaction logs sintaxes that the NBU scripts use:

isql dump database MyDB //for full backups

isql dump transaction MyDB //for transaction logs backup

So we have the impression Netbackup would have no problem in dumping cumulative images from Sybase. However, the Netbackup 8.0 for Sybase Guide does not include any example of cumulative backups, and also does not list this type even though the feature is available from SAP since 2013:

Netbackup 8.0 Admins Guid page 53

So my first question is: has anyone ever used Netbackup to backup cumulative dumps from Sybase, customizing the sample backup script? Have you guys encountered any problems or suggest adopting this strategy?

For example, one of our concerns is about the bplist output while searching for restore images. The Netbackup guide shows the image names having the "D" and "T" identifiers for Dump or Transaction backups, but it is not clear how would we identify the cumulative backups in that case.

Question n. 2 is about the scripting process. There is one obvious problem in the sample script - it is designed to backup only one database, so this will be pretty useless in a customer that has thousands of databases across hundreds of instances.

So I ask: has anyone come up with this issue and how have you solved?

I am considering a few options:

1. Write a new script that reads a txt file with the DB Names (or maybe queries the master database?) and run the sample netbackup script multiple times, changing the DB name every run; would that work? I mean, after the first run, wouldn't the script return 0 to the Netbackup Client and terminate the backup job?
2. Change the sample script so it receives the DB name as a parameter, and then include the script into the Netbackup Selection multiple times, with the DB names as a parameter; has anyone ever done that?
3. (the bad one) Create hundreds of scripts and hundreds policies, one for each database.

Please let me know your experience, as NBU documentation and community posts are pretty shallow about this points.

Thank you very much and sorry for the long post :)

Rafael

[Michal_Mikulik1]

Hello,

maybe there should be 2 posts, because the question about scripting has no relation to cumulative backups.

Well, in my experience, Sybase agent is one of the most "neglected" database agents in NetBackup. Guide is the same for ages, no snapshot support, just db + tranlog backup choices available 15 years or more..

Thanks to that, information about cumulative backups option is new for me. Have you tried "dump db cumulative to sybackup::" etc.? And restore using this backup of course. Was it working?

But even if it was working, I would not rely on it if it is not mentioned in the guide. I recommend to open a support case for this question.

Regards

Michal

[rcdauria]

Thank you sir, we will validate this in the next few days and let you know.

However I was actually looking for someone who had already done that, or understand how they dealt with hundreds of database/database scripts.

Rafael