This section combines all these concepts by giving some examples of backup schedules and some tips for efficient scheduling.

When to schedule backups

Typically, you schedule backups to run during lowest user activity, usually at night. Full backups take the most time, so schedule them at weekends.

Consider scheduling full backups for different clients (backup specifications) on different days, as shown in “Staggering full backups” on page 107.

NOTE:

Data Protector offers reports that show available time slots from a device-usage point of view. This allows you to pick a time where the devices to use are not likely to be occupied by serving already existing backups.

Staggering full backups

Performing a full backup of all systems during the same day may cause network load and time window problems. To avoid these problems, use the staggered approach for full backups.

Table 8 The staggered approach

 

Mon

Tue

Wed

...

 

 

 

 

 

system_grp_a

FULL

Incr1

Incr1

...

 

 

 

 

 

system_grp_b

Incr1

FULL

Incr1

...

 

 

 

 

 

system_grp_c

Incr1

Incr1

FULL

...

 

 

 

 

 

Optimizing for restore

The combination of your scheduling policy with full and incremental backups highly influences the time needed to restore your data. This is illustrated in three examples in this section.

For a point-in-time restore, you need a full backup plus all the incremental backups to the desired point in time. Since full and incremental backups are typically not on the same media, you may need to load different media for the full and each

Concepts guide

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