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user initiated backup from admin console?

donald_p
Level 2
So I am curious to know if it is possible to perform user initiated backups from the administration console.

We have the NetBackup Administration Console installed on a Windows 2k3 box. Occasionally we will be required to perform manually backups on various servers and it would be convenient to initiate the backups from the admin console on the master server.

I have seen documentation on how to initiate user backups from the console, which will be useful eventually when we automate this process, in the meantime is there a way to do this from the admin console?

We are using NetBackup 6.5.4 by the way...
1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

Kris_Williams
Level 2
Employee
Hello,



It is possible to kick off a manual backup of a client listed in a policy on the master using the Windows Admin Console. To do this you would right click the policy and select manual backup. This isn't, however, what most would consider a "user" based backup. Most of the time when referring to a "user" based backup, the job is initiated from the client itself.

If you are logged onto the client, you can open up the Backup, Archive, Restore GUI and run a user based backup. The client would need to be configured in a policy with a user based backup schedule defined.

As for automation, the command %installdir%\NetBackup\Bin\bpbackup.exe can be used to kick off user initiated backups from the command line. For more information, please see the command usage guide located inside the "Veritas NetBackup (tm) 6.5 Commands for Windows" page 42.

http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/290235.htm




Thanks,

Kris

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4 REPLIES 4

Kris_Williams
Level 2
Employee
Hello,



It is possible to kick off a manual backup of a client listed in a policy on the master using the Windows Admin Console. To do this you would right click the policy and select manual backup. This isn't, however, what most would consider a "user" based backup. Most of the time when referring to a "user" based backup, the job is initiated from the client itself.

If you are logged onto the client, you can open up the Backup, Archive, Restore GUI and run a user based backup. The client would need to be configured in a policy with a user based backup schedule defined.

As for automation, the command %installdir%\NetBackup\Bin\bpbackup.exe can be used to kick off user initiated backups from the command line. For more information, please see the command usage guide located inside the "Veritas NetBackup (tm) 6.5 Commands for Windows" page 42.

http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/290235.htm




Thanks,

Kris

Rakesh_Khandelw
Level 6
What do you mean by user initiated backup from the admin cosole? If you have access to admin console then you can start any backup. Typically, user backups are always full backups, you can select Full schedule in the policy and start the backup from admin console.

If I understood it correct, you want your users to have ability to start backups from the admin console running on their server. If that's the question then yes you can do it, there is nothing special you need to do other than setting up admin console. Once you have admin console up and running you can see all the policies and start backup for the server you are on or any other server which belongs to a active policy in your NetBackup domain. Better way to do it  - create a user schedule in the policy and now your users can start the backup from the client without having admin access to NetBackup. But keep in mind user backups are always Full backups.

J_H_Is_gone
Level 6
A Schedule type of "User Backup" is just that - it cannot be started from the console.

However

You can create a schedule - say Full - but DO NOT CREATE any WINDOWS for that schedule.

Meaning you would have a schedule for full backups all configured - but that schedule would never have an open window to start -  and you would have to fill in the backup selection.

So now that you have a schedule you can do a manual backup.

Not sure that Netbackup was ever intended to work this way and not sure if it would cause problems or not - this is just me saying it can be done - but don't know if there would be any side effects of doing it.

donald_p
Level 2
So I guess I should give a few more details as to what exactly I am looking for, though from what everyone has said so far I am guessing I will not find a suitable solution for doing this from the Admin Console...

We have 30+ ESX servers, each with potentially hundreds of VMs on them. Periodically our users will mark a VM as being a "template" VM. We will then want to back the whole VM up, but only the ones marked as template, and we only need to back them up once...

Logging in to each of the 30+ ESX servers to perform the manual backups of any templates on them would be very tedious. Modifying policies from the admin console to reflect the correct Client/Directory Selections for each of the ESX servers is also going to be painful.

From what I am hearing, doing it via the command line is going to be the easiest route to take. I would have preferred to be able to use the Admin Console, since that is what we use for our other backup policies and is therefore a familiar interface...

Anywho, thanks guys for your quick responses, I appreciate the help!