Calendar-based scheduling was better once I got to a certain level of understanding.
Pros: A good benefit was being able to add a client to a policy and, like magic, a full backup is done that evening, even though 98% of my fulls are done on a weekend. Like many, I have a weekly full backup with one retention, and a less frequent, full backup that is retained longer. This meant that each weekend I'd have some of one kind of backup and some of another. Since I have one retention level per tape, this meant I'd frequently have a slow, long retention backup "hogging" a tape drive when other backups were playing nicely at my multiplexing limit. On bad days, I'd have 2 or 3 of these slow backups start on different tapes, really putting a crimp into the works (I only have 5 drives and they are busy 90+% of the time). Calendar-based scheduling has allowed me to minimize this. Now, all my (monthly) long-retention backups are done during the first week of the month. I may want to watch that first week, but in general the calendar-based schedules run without any babysitting. Also, for those clients that allow it, the "allow retry after run day" really helps NetBackup keep backups going so I don't have to babysit so much. In my experience, I have more complete backups with this setting and that means better ability to restore. Add a periodic "endangered filesets" report (courtesy of someone on this mailing list) and I now consider NetBackup (v5.1MP5) worthy of its "Enterprise" title, something I would not have said before (this report and calendar-based scheduling)! Some have complained about before and after midnight being different days, with problems or unexpected results with a window that spans midnight. Frequency-based schedules share some of these problems, so some time ago I just split up my workload so some backups are kicked off before midnight and some after. Setup well, I get few 196s (backup didn't start in window), and most of them are not at midnight, but at 4 or 5 in the morning when something strange happened to delay everything. Cons: Relative to frequency-based scheduling, calendar-based schedules have no cons. If I hadn't started with frequency-based schedules in NetBackup, I'd say frequency-based is weird and goofy. What? You mean I pick a 4-day frequency for weekly backups? Now that is goofy. ;-) cheers, wayne Hindle, Greg wrote, in part, on 6/13/2006 2:36 PM: > > What are the pros and cons of each? > > > We have switched from calendar base to frequency based but there are > rumblings about switching back. I need more info to keep this from > happening. I have copies down ideas from the current discussion but > thought their has to be more reason why frequency based is better than > calendar based? Right? > > > Greg > > >>> This e-mail and any attachments are confidential, may contain legal, > >>> professional or other privileged information, and are intended solely for > >>> the addressee. If you are not the intended recipient, do not use the > >>> information in this e-mail in any way, delete this e-mail and notify the > >>> sender. CEG-IP1 > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu@mailman.eng.auburn.edu > http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu > _______________________________________________ Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu@mailman.eng.auburn.edu http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu