You can combine full and incremental backups when you configure scheduled backups. For example, you may run a full backup on Sundays and incremental backups every working day. To back up a large amount of data and avoid the high volume peak for the full backups, use the staggered approach. See “Staggering full backups” on page 107.

Scheduling, backup configurations, and sessions

Backup configuration

When you schedule a backup, all the objects specified in that backup specification are backed up in the scheduled backup session(s).

For each individual or periodic scheduled backup, you can specify the following options: Backup type (full or incremental), Network load, and Backup protection. With split mirror or snapshot backup, in the case of ZDB to disk or ZDB to disk+tape (instant recovery enabled), you specify the Split mirror/snapshot backup option. For split mirror and snapshot backups, the backup type is ignored (a full backup is performed).

Within one backup specification, you can schedule both ZDB to disk and ZDB to disk+tape, and specify a different data protection period for each individual or periodic scheduled backup.

Backup session

When a backup session is started, Data Protector tries to allocate all needed resources, such as devices. The session is queued for as long as the required minimum resources are not yet available. Data Protector tries to allocate the resources for a specific period of time, the timeout. Timeout is user configurable. If the resources are still unavailable after the timeout, the session is aborted.

Optimizing backup performance

To optimize the load on the Cell Manager, Data Protector by default starts five backup sessions at the same time. If more are scheduled at the same time, the excessive sessions are queued and started subsequently as the others are finished.

Scheduling tips and tricks

The sections “Full and incremental backups” on page 91 and “Keeping backed up data and information about the data” on page 99 describe the concept of backup generations, data protection, and catalog protection.

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Planning your backup strategy