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IBM-AUSTRIA - PC-HW-Support 30 Aug 1999 |
Scheduling Backups
Scheduling Backups
When thinking about
which machines you are going to back up, you will probably think about
file or application servers. Unfortunately, these machines get updates
during the day, and the only moment it makes sense to back up these
systems is after hours.
The reason for this is that backup products need
to access files and back up a valid copy of these files. If these files
are in use and modified during a backup, the backup version you have
would not be very helpful when restored.
That is why you should
determine a period of time in which operations on the machine that you
will back up are minimal, and use this period of time to run the
backup. This period is often referred to as the backup window .
You will soon see that this backup window starts somewhere late at night,
and ends early in the morning, not exactly the time you or someone else
wants to sit beside the machine and start or stop backup operations.
Luckily, backup programs make intense use of scheduling mechanisms.
These schedulers allow you to start a backup at a certain point in time.
The following points are important when automating the backup processes
using schedulers:
- What will my backup application do in case of
errors? Will it continue or stop? The worst case would be if the
application would stop and ask for a user intervention (which is not
available at that time).
- Will operations and errors be logged
somewhere, so I can check if the backups were successful?
- If the
backup operation takes longer than the defined backup window, will it
continue or stop?
There are different scheduling mechanisms, each with
its own advantages and disadvantages.
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