"exclude dates" problem

[yilkilicaslan]

Hi All;

I have different policies for monthly backups and daily backups. For all daily policies, i excluded the last day of the month. When all the monthly backups run last day of the month, daily backups dont run until midnight. After midnight, all the daily jobs start running. How can i prevent this situation?

[Will_Restore]

If policy schedule spans midnight, say 9pm-2am, this can happen. You can 1) modify schedule window, 9pm-1159pm or 2) modify exclude, last day of month and first day of month

[Vickie]

Please share schedule details, backup window for daily backup schedule.

[yilkilicaslan]

I attached my schedules.

[Shaun_Taylor]

I've had a similar problem in the past - wr's post above covers the only solutions that I thought of at the time, although I'd be interested to hear if anyone has any other ways around it!

[yilkilicaslan]

If i set my schedule to run until midnight, it wont be enough backup to finish. Therefore, i have to set it like this.  I dont want to exclude both last day of the month and the day after last day because i can forget it excluded and backup may not be run.

[Mark_Solutions]

Last day if the month is always really difficult A couple of possible work-arounds Use 1st Saturday (or Sunday) of the month - this prevents Full backup running during the working week anyway. So daily backups run Sunday to Fridayday (and Satuday and Monday as well if you wish) and Weekly Fulls run on 2nd, 3rd, 4th, last Saturday of the Month, Monthly runs 1st Saturday of the month The other option is to have a backup window from 00:10 to what ever time in the moning - that way your exlclude just excludes the day you want as your frequency based ones do not cross midnight - you just work a day ahead of you know what i mean (so Monday nights backup actually starts at 00:10 on Tusday) The only way to stop it happening and for single exlcudes is to not cross midnight with a schedule Remember that crossing midnight is important for Calendar based schedules - don't do it! - hence why i say run on the first Saturday of the month - the window will be 00:10 to 23:50 - which is effectively Friday night if you see what i mean! Hope this helps

[Will_Restore]

>>If i set my schedule to run until midnight, it wont be enough backup to finish.

This is common misconception.  Backup window is for start time not end time.  If your backup does not complete before the window it is not going to be terminated.

[yilkilicaslan]

This is common misconception.  Backup window is for start time not end time.  If your backup does not complete before the window it is not going to be terminated.

Are you sure? Can you explain it in details?

[Will_Restore]

>>Are you sure? Can you explain it in details?

Yes, from experience I can say this is the way it works.  We have some schedule windows that are a couple hours long but the actual backup job takes almost a full day.

Notice it is called a Start Window not a Backup Window. 

"To define a time window during which jobs can start"

[Vickie]

Hi,

Daily schedule window taken into account even if you use exclude dates.

Window that spans midnight become two seprate window, as 

1) Your schedule starts from 22:00 -- 14:00 ( which means 22:00 to 00:00 is one day and 00:00 to 14:00 is another next day)

2) As you exclude 30th for April month.  As windows starts from (30th April 22:00 to 1st May 14:00), here 30th April ends  at 00:00. 

3) But the window still active  till 1st May 14:00 due to which backup runs during the active backup window  which is (00:00 to 14:00 1st May).

I suggest,  here you should use frequency greater than the schedule  window or one day for Daily schedule backup.

By doing this, the backup will not start before set frequency got ends up. This might fix this for you.

Plz share the frequency you set for "Daily Backup"

[yilkilicaslan]

I set daily backup frequency as a daily. 

>> This is common misconception.  Backup window is for start time not end time.  If your backup does not complete before the window it is not going to be terminated.

Then, why are we getting "client backup was not attempted because backup window closed(196)" error? I set my exchange policies as they finish at 00:00 but if it is not completed before 00:00 i am getting the error message as i mentioned.

[Will_Restore]

You need to look at the Detailed Status tab to see why the job is not starting at 6pm per the schedule.  Perhaps your storage unit is busy for the whole 6 hours? 

[yilkilicaslan]

There are a lot of exchange policies starting at the same time. I think netbackup processes these policies from top to down. Policies getting error are the last ones in the policies list. They are waiting for other policies finished and after 00:00, they are getting error message as i mentioned above. 

[Mark_Solutions]

Being queued is not actually running - so if they sit in the queue waiting for say a tape drive and by the time they get the tape drive and can "run" they fail as they have missed their window You either need more streams so that everything is actually "running" when your window closes or use a system as i suggested earlier

[Shaun_Taylor]

As Mark says, it sounds like the jobs are queuing - they need to start writing data before the end of the start window.

[yilkilicaslan]

I know that i can solve my problem increasing streams. In fact, i want to learn that it is true or not what wr is said:

>> This is common misconception.  Backup window is for start time not end time.  If your backup does not complete before the window it is not going to be terminated.

[Mark_Solutions]

wr is correct in that statement - it is a start window - however it must actually be running and not queued during that window to be successful - it will not be cancelled off when the window closes - it could happily run for a week as long as it started running within your window

[Will_Restore]

Right, it's all a matter of Symantec semantics. :)

If the job doesn't start then it cannot finish within the window, thus your Status 196.

This behaviour is what leads folks to have huge start windows when what is really needed is better architecture. But that is hard in practice so most folks take the easy way out which creates your original problem - exclude date apparently not being honored (when in fact it is).

[Vickie]

Okay,

It seems that your issue could only resolve when you'll exclude two days. (day last of month and day after that).

And I guess you need not remove that day from exclude dates.

Reason : When 1st of any month which has been excluded as well, will ends up at 00:00.

So, the backup will run next day 2nd of month in the continuing active window "00:00 to 14:00". As it is running at midnight, mentioned above in your post. 

Note: Here you'll just lost two hours window which is 22:00 to 00:00, which from the 1st day of the month. No other harm by doing this, as you need not to worry about to remove next day from exclude.

You should Try this,