NetVault 12.1 - Administration Guide for Managed Service Providers

Creating Source Sets for backup jobs

Source Sets are used to specify source device options. Source Sets are required for Plug-in for Consolidation jobs, Plug-in for Data Copy jobs, and Secondary Copy jobs.You can create Source Sets from the Create Backup Job page.

To create a Source Set:

Start the backup job wizard, and click Create New next to the Source Storage list.

On the Backup Job Wizard — Create Source Set page, click Device Selection, and configure the following settings.

Table 45. Device Selection options for Source Set
Option	Description
Any Device	This option is selected by default. If you do not specify a device type, NetVault Backup uses any suitable device for a job.
Specify Device	To use particular devices for a job, select this option. In the associated box, clear the check marks for the devices that you do not want to use. When you remove a library, the associated drives are automatically removed.
Local Drives Only	To use only devices that are locally attached to the target client, select this check box. NOTE: NetVault SmartDisk is considered a network-attached device or a non-local device.

Click Save, and in the Create New Set dialog box, type a name for the set.

The set name can contain alphanumeric and non-alphanumeric characters, but it cannot contain non‑Latin characters. On Linux OS, the name can have a maximum of 200 characters. On Windows OS, there is no length restriction. However, a maximum of 40 characters is recommended on all platforms.

Click Save to save the Restore Source Set.

Creating Backup Advanced Options Sets

An Advanced Options Set is used to specify backup retirement settings, Secondary Copy job definitions, and other advanced options. You can create a Backup Advanced Options Set from the Create Backup Job page.

To create a Backup Advanced Options Set:

Start the backup job wizard, and click Create New next to the Advanced Options list.

On the Advanced Options page, click the corresponding button, and configure the options described in the following sections:

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Setting backup retirement options

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Specifying additional options

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Creating a Secondary Copy

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Configuring pre- and post script options for backup jobs

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Configuring user-defined events for backup jobs

Click Save, and in Advanced Options Set Name, type a name for the set.

Click Save to save the Advanced Options Set.

Setting backup retirement options

To set the backup retirement options:

On the Advanced Options page, click Backup Life, and configure the following settings.

Figure 19. Backup Life dialog box

Table 46. Backup Life options

Option

Description

Archive

To create an archive, select this option.

An archive cannot be used as a base for Incremental or Differential backups. When archiving data, you must always select the Full Backup type. If you select Incremental or Differential Backup type, the restore job fails.

Backup

This option is selected by default. To create a backup, use this option.

Backup Life

This option specifies how long a backup is retained.

A backup can be retained indefinitely or retired after a specified period. NetVault Backup supports generation- and time-based retirement methods for backups. For more information about backup retirement methods, see Backup retirement.

You can specify the retirement options in the Backup Advanced Options Set. Alternatively, you can use the Change Expiry method to set or change the expiry date or generation count for existing savesets. For more information about the Change Expiry method, see Configuring saveset expiry options.

To set the Backup Life option, do the following:

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Backup life — based on Full Backup count: To configure generation-based retirement, select the Discard After Full Backup Count option. In the associated list, type or select the maximum number Full Backups that you want to retain.

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Backup life — based on time: To configure time-based retirement, select the Discard After option. Type or select the period, and in the associated list, select the Days, Weeks, Months, or Years option.

By default, the Backup Life option is set to Discard After and the retirement period is set to three months.

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Force Expiry: By default, if a backup has any dependent backups, its retirement is deferred until all dependent backups are ready for retirement.

You can select this check box to retire a backup according to its retirement schedule. Forcing this behavior can cause early retirement of dependent Incremental and Differential Backups.

To apply this rule globally to all backups, you can modify the Media Manager settings. For more information, see Configuring retirement rules for dependent backups. If the Retirement Timing Control option is set to Force Always, the Force Expiry is option is used, regardless of state of this check box.

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Retain a backup indefinitely: To retain a backup indefinitely, select the Don't Discard based on Full Backup Count and Don't Discard based on Time options.

NOTE: If you set both Discard After Full Backup Count and Discard After options for a Full Backup, the backup is retired only when both conditions are met. For example, if you set the Discard After Full Backup Count option to four Full Backups and the Discard After option to 30 days, the backup is retired after five Full Backup counts and 30 days.

NOTE: When you set time-based retirement, the time component (HH:MM) is automatically set to the job save or job submit time.

NOTE: In time-based retirement, the time component (HH:MM) does not represent the actual retirement time. It only represents the time due for backup retirement. The actual time of retirement is determined by the interval at which Media Manager scans the Media Database to identify the backups that it needs to retire. The default interval between two scans is 60 minutes. Thus, if the retirement time is set to 10:20, the backup is actually retired at 11:00. You can change this default setting in the mediamgr.cfg file. For more information, see Configuring default interval for backup retirement scans.

Offline Index After

Online backup indexes allow you to quickly scan through the contents of a saveset without loading the media. However, these indexes can increase the overall size of the NetVault Database. To manage the database size, you can delete the online indexes.

You can use different methods to delete online indexes:

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You can configure the Offline Index After option in the Backup Advanced Options Set to automatically delete the online index for a backup after the specified period. This method is described in this section.

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You can use the Days of inactivity before an index is offlined setting to configure a global policy for deleting online indexes after a specified period of inactivity. For more information, see Configuring Media Manager settings for backup indexes.

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You can manually delete the online indexes for one or more backups from the Manage Backup Indexes page. For more information, see Manually deleting online indexes.

To specify the index retention period in the Backup Advanced Options set, select Offline Index After option. Type or select the length of time that you want to retain the index, and in the associated list, select the Days, Weeks, Months, or Years option.

Click Set to save the settings and close the dialog box.


	NOTE: When a backup stored on a disk-based storage device (such as NetVault SmartDisk, Quest DR Series system, or Data Domain system) is retired, that backup is deleted from the device. You cannot import the deleted backup by scanning the device.

Specifying additional options

To specify additional options for a backup job:

On the Advanced Options page, click Additional Options, and configure the following settings.

Table 47. Additional backup job options

Option

Description

Enable Encryption

NetVault Backup provides two encryption plug-ins:

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NetVault Backup Plug-in for Standard Encryption (Plug-in for Standard Encryption)

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NetVault Backup Plug-in for Advanced Encryption (Plug-in for Advanced Encryption)

These plug-ins provide support for CAST-128, AES-256, and CAST-256 algorithms to meet regulatory backup security requirements. For more information about these plug-ins, see the Quest NetVault Backup Plug-in for Standard Encryption User’s Guide or Quest NetVault Backup Plug-in for Advanced Encryption User’s Guide.

Once the Plug-in for Standard Encryption or Plug-in for Advanced Encryption is installed on a client, you can do either of the following:

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Configure the plug-in to encrypt all backups originating for the client where the plug-in is installed. For more information about this setting, see relevant the plug-in user's guide.

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Use the job-level encryption option to encrypt specific backups for the client. You can also select encryption only for the secondary copy.

The job-level encryption option is useful in the following situations:

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Any plug-in installed on the server or client is incompatible with the encryption plug-ins.

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Only specific backups on the server or client require encryption.

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Primary backups do not require encryption, while secondary backups for offsite protection require encryption.

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Primary backups are targeted to storage devices that support deduplication.

To perform job-level encryption for a primary backup, select the Enable Encryption check box. For more information about using job-level encryption for a secondary copy, see Encrypt Secondary Copy Only.

NOTE: An encrypted backup can be restored to the original client or an alternate client. In both cases, the plug-in must be installed on the target client and it must be configured as it was when the backup was performed — using the same Encryption Key String and Encryption Algorithm.

Enable Deduplication

Deduplication is enabled by default. Clear this check box if the target device does not support data deduplication.

When performing backups to devices that support deduplication, we recommend that you clear this check box for the following jobs:

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Backups that use the encryption option. Encrypted backups do not deduplicate well and should not be deduplicated.

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Incremental Backups that you want to consolidate using the Plug-in for Consolidation. By not selecting this option, you eliminate the unnecessary overhead of rehydrating the deduplicated Incremental Backups during the consolidation process. You can enable deduplication while backing up the Consolidated Full Backup.

NOTE: You cannot completely disable deduplication for a Quest DR Series system. The Quest DR Series systems provide a configuration mode for deduplication that controls whether deduplication is performed on the client or on the Quest DR Series system. You can turn off client-side deduplication by setting the Dedupe mode to Passthrough. For more information about this setting, see the Quest DR Series system Administration Guide.

NOTE: When backups stored on the Quest DR Series systems are selected for backup consolidation jobs, the overhead of rehydrating the deduplicated data can have a negative impact on performance.

Verify After Backup

To verify the stream length written to the media and ensure that no blocks were dropped during backup, select this check box.

Backup verification is performed as Phase 2 job after the actual backup is completed. If any dropped blocks are detected, the verification phase reports an error and fails. You must run the backup again if the verification phase fails.

NOTE: The Phase 2 backup verification job does not verify the integrity of data. This phase only verifies that the backup was actually written to the media.

By default, the verification job runs on the NetVault Backup Server. To configure a different client to run the verification phase, see Configuring default settings for Verify Plug‑in.

Use Network Compression

To use network compression while transferring data over the network, select this check box.

The data is compressed on the backup client before being transferred over the network. On the machine to which the target device is attached, the data is decompressed before being written to the media.

Network compression does not work for the following types of jobs:

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