Storage Lifecycle policies

[jacksors]

I'm running NetBackup 7 and write all my backups to a Data Domain disk appliance. Currently we use Vault to duplicate to tape.  I'm getting ready to setup storage lifecycle policies so that I can begin duplicating the images written to disk out to tape and was hoping someone can provide some insight on the best way to configure SLPs.

What I have today is a backup policy with 3 schedules: Daily, Weekly and Monthly. Each of these has a seperate retention time. Today, the retention is set to 2 weeks on all of those and when we run our Vault policy we change that retention when its written to tape based on the which schedule backed it up.

I wanted to know how to best fit this 3 schedule model into an SLP. From what I can figure, is that I will have to create 3 SLPs, one for each schedule. I'd configure each with a backup policy that wrote to disk and expired the image after 2 weeks and a duplication policy that would write to tape and would expire the image after 4 weeks for my Weekly Schedule and after 12 months for my Monthly schedule.

I would then have to go into each policy and modify each schedule and select to override the default policy storage unit with an SLP that matched the retention policy for that schedule.

I have to imagine there is an easier way but can't think of one. I know SLPs are used quite frequently out there so wanted to get some ideas on how someone else has this configured. Thanks.

[bboening]

Did you ever get a reply?  

We are doing the same plan, and looking into converting to SLP

[Mark_Henderson]

Yep,  It is three different SLP, or if you decide to keep the daily and weeklys for the same period, you would only need 2.  We are looking at a 5 week retention to give a guarantee of 28 days of restoration for ever server.  That would be the SLP defined to the policy level.  The weekly we would do another SLP that would keep the monthly on disk for the first period and the second copy on tape for the final period. 

Are you doing this on one data domain or do you have 2 that replicate.  If you could give me the guidelines, I could mock one up and post screen shots..

Thanks

Mark Henderson

[bboening]

Just 1 Domain...  I am still old school, by creating 3 diffrent backup policy for each server (INC\Daily, Full\Week, Full\Month)

For each one of those, is traffic on the network..

If SLP can limit the traffic to the FC (Disk toTape) this will be a good idea..  (I think this is how SLP works)

[Mark_Henderson]

We re looking to reduce traffic on the network to the clients by implementing synthetic fulls where ever possible.  The synthetic can then be ran out to tape from the data domain.  If you do 3 policies you are missing out on the easy synthetics.  SLP is persistent and does not really make it easy to schedule when the next step will run.  We designed the new environment to cope with it.  Every thing will land on disk first.  Most things will never leave disk (but SLP will duplicate them to another site)  The intention is that only long term retention will even hit tape.  There will be exceptions but we are planning to reduce the amount of data to the tape significantly.

Mark

[Marianne]

PLEASE don't create separate policies for full's and incrementals - this will result in incrementals running as full.

Create ONE policy with multiple schedules.

See: http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH66214

[cgoliver]

We have cut over all of our RMAN to SLP backed Advanced Disk, as well we have all of our daily differential hitting adv-disk and the being duped by SLP.

I'm still working out all the kinks for the DSTU's and making sure we get the dups onto tape.

To answer the question, we seutup an SLP per policy, schedule, which seems to work really well so far.

e.g.

System_Full_Prod          Runs once a month Directly to tape

System_Cumu_Prod       Runs once a week  Directly to tape

System_Incr_Prod          Runs daily             This is sent to disk and then duped

We don't yet posses the resources to backup 300 TB to disk and haven't invested in dedup just yet.

Come on October 1.

Chris

[BMonteiro]

What about Oracle Rman databases backup. We have to specify a script in the job selection, so we have to create a new policy for each method (full, inc).

Does this means the inc is running full? 

[Omar_Villa]

Is realy easy to get this done 1. Create 2 slps naming convention recommended is: Slp_v15d_local site name_p1M_remote site Thus means: slp virtual 15 days local site_second copy physical 1 month retention, so create another slp for the 1 year retention Slp_v15d_local site name_p1Y_remote site Under each slp you will have 2 streams: Slp_v15d_local site name_p1M_remote site: 1backup, 15 day retention, virtual tapes pools, virtual stu or sug 2duplicate, 1 month retention, physical tape pool, physical stu or sug Slp_v15d_p1Y 1backup, 15 day retention, virtual tapes pools, virtual stu or sug 2duplicate, 1 year retention, physical tape pool, physical stu or sug Go to your backup schedules and override the stu under each schedule with the corresponding slp. Hope this helps Regards