NetVault 12.4 - Administration Guide for Managed Service Providers

Backup and recovery strategy

The primary objective of backing up data is to recover from the damages caused by a data loss event and resume normal operations quickly. This objective requires a good backup strategy, which maximizes data availability and minimizes data loss and downtime, while balancing your business requirements with costs, resources, and other factors.

To create a good backup plan, consider the possible failure modes, like hardware failure, data corruption, human error, or loss of a data center, and select the suitable backup methods and features to recover from these scenarios.

Typically, your backup plan should define what backup methods are used, when and at what intervals the backups are performed, how the backups are stored, how long the backups are retained, and how the backup media are re-used.

Creating backup jobs

The MSP administrator, tenant administrator, and tenant users can create and submit backup jobs of authorized clients. The wizard can be accessed from the Guided Configuration or Create Backup Job link in the Navigation pane.

To create a backup job:

In the Navigation pane, click Create Backup Job.

— or —

In the Navigation pane, click Guided Configuration, and then on the NetVault Configuration Wizard page, click Create Backup Jobs.

Figure 14. Create Backup Job page

In Job Name, type a name for the job. Assign a descriptive name that allows you to easily identify the job for monitoring its progress or restoring data.

The job name can contain alphanumeric and non-alphanumeric characters, but it cannot contain non‑Latin characters. There is no length restriction. However, a maximum of 40 characters is recommended on all platforms.

On the Create Backup Job page, the actions described in the following table are available for the details listed below Job Name.


Icon	Description
	Hover to view information about the corresponding detail.
	To create a new set for the corresponding detail, click this icon. The corresponding drawer opens. Enter the required information, and then click Save. Optionally, click Clone Existing Set, select a set and click Load, and then enter a name for the cloned set at the bottom of the page.
	To edit the information for the selected set, click this icon. The corresponding drawer opens. Update the required information, and then click Save. Optionally, click Clone Existing Set, select a set and click Load, and then enter a name for the cloned set at the bottom of the page.
	Click to delete the selected set. Click OK to confirm.

The details described in the following table are available for viewing, creating, editing, and deleting.


Detail	Description
Selections	Select an existing Backup Selection Set, or create a new set and select the items that you want to back up. NOTE: The data items that are available for selection depend on the plug-in in use. For more information about selecting data for backups, see the relevant plug-in user’s guide.
Plugin Options	Select an existing Backup Options Set, or create a new set and configure the options that you want to use. NOTE: The backup options that are available to a job depend on the plug-in in use. For more information about these options, see the relevant plug-in user's guide.
Schedule	Select an existing Schedule Set, or create a new set and configure the schedule type and method. For more information, see Creating Schedule Sets. NOTE: The predefined set “Immediate” is selected by default. To run the job as soon as it is submitted, use this set.
Source Storage	This option appears only when creating a Plug-in for Consolidation and Plug-in for Data Copy job. Select an existing Source Set, or create a new set and configure the source device options for the job. For more information, see Creating Source Sets for backup jobs. NOTE: The predefined set “Any Device” is selected by default.
Target Storage	Select an existing target set, or create a new set and configure the target device and media options for the job. For more information, see Creating Target Sets. NOTE: The predefined set “Default Backup Target Options” is selected by default.
Advanced Options	Select an existing Backup Advanced Options set, or create a new set and configure the options that you want to use. For more information, see Creating Backup Advanced Options Sets. NOTE: The predefined set “Default Advanced Backup Options” is selected by default.

Select one of the following methods to save or schedule the job:

•

To save the definition without scheduling the job, click Save.

You can view, edit, or run this job from the Manage Job Definitions page. For more information, see Managing job definitions. This job is not displayed on the Job Status page until you submit it.

•

To submit the job for scheduling, click Save & Submit.

You can monitor the job progress from the Job Status page and view the logs from the View Logs page. For more information, see Viewing job activity and Viewing log messages.


	NOTE: A job that uses the Schedule Type “Triggered” is only scheduled when you run the script.

Creating Schedule Sets

A Schedule Set is used to specify scheduling options for backup and restore jobs. These options define when and at what intervals a job runs. You can create Schedule Sets from the Create Backup Job and Create Restore Job pages.

To create a Schedule Set:

Start the job configuration wizard, and click Create New next to the Schedule list.

On the Create Schedule Set page, configure the following options.

Figure 15. Create Schedule Set page

Table 39. Schedule type

Schedule type

Description

Immediate

To run a job as soon as it is submitted, select this option.

Once

To run a job once on the specified days, select this option, and configure the following options:

•

Run at: Type or select the start time for the job.

•

Starting from: Type or select the date on which the schedule takes effect.

•

Schedule method: Select a scheduling method and configure the required options. The available methods are: Any day, On days of week, On days of month, and On specified date. For more information, see Scheduling methods and options for non-repeating jobs.

Repeating

To create a recurring schedule for jobs that are performed regularly, select this option, and configure the following options:

•

Run at: Type or select the start time for the job.

•

Starting from: Type or select the date on which the schedule takes effect.

•

Schedule method: Select a scheduling method and configure the required options. The available methods are: Every day, On days of week, On days of month, and Every. For more information, see Scheduling methods and options for repeating jobs.

NOTE: For repeating jobs, the first instance is scheduled when you submit the job. The next instance is scheduled when the current instance becomes active, and this procedure is repeated for each subsequent instance.

You cannot use the Repeating schedule type to run Secondary Copy jobs.

Triggered

To schedule a job from an external script, select this option.

The most common use of this option is to run a job independently of the NetVault Backup Scheduler such as from a 3rd-party scheduler or an automation interface.

To schedule a triggered job, do the following:

•

Create an external script file, and include the following command in the script:

nvtrigger <trigger_name>

A trigger name can contain alphanumeric and non-alphanumeric characters, but it cannot contain non-Latin characters. On Linux OS, the names can have a maximum of 64 characters. On Windows OS, there is no length restriction, but a maximum of 20 characters is recommended. On Windows OS, the following characters are not supported:

" / \ : ; | * ? < >^

The nvtrigger utility is stored in the bin directory under the NetVault Backup installation directory. If this path is not configured in the path variable, provide the complete file path. Alternatively, include commands to change to the appropriate directory in the script.

You can run the script from the command line interface.

•

When creating the Schedule Set, select the Triggered option. In the Trigger Name box, provide the same trigger name that was specified with the nvtrigger command in the external script file.

NOTE: You cannot use the Triggered schedule type to run Secondary Copy jobs.

Under Job Options, configure the following settings.

Table 40. Job retry and priority settings for Schedule Set

Option

Description

Job Retries

This setting is used to automatically reschedule a job after a failed attempt.

To schedule retry attempts for a job, do the following:

•

Select the Job Retries check box, and in the value box type or select a value from 1 through 10. You can set a maximum of 10 retries for a job.

•

In the Retry After box, type or select the interval between two attempts. By default, the job is scheduled to run immediately after a failed attempt.

NOTE: For each retry attempt, the same Job ID number is used, but the instance ID number is increased by 1.

Job Priority

The Schedule Manager assigns a default priority level to each job type (backup, restore, and report). These default settings are applied globally to all backup, restore, and report jobs. The priority settings are used to prioritize resource allocation when two or more jobs are scheduled to run at the same time.

By default, the Schedule Manager assigns the following priority levels:

•

Backup job: 30

•

Restore job: 20

•

Report job: 50

You can override the global priority setting for an individual job by configuring the Job Priority option in the Schedule Set.

To override the default priority settings for an individual job:

•

In the Job Priority box, type or select a value from 1 through 100. 1 denotes highest priority, while 100 denotes lowest priority. A job with a priority level of zero (0) runs as a background task.

To change the priority level settings globally for all jobs, see Configuring default job priority settings.

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 Schedule Set.