Backup Central

I need to schedule backups for several servers to run after hours on Monday and Thursday only. I want only Full backups, no incrementals. I do not want any backups on any other days. Will the following work?

$Conf{FullPeriod} = '0.97';
$Conf{IncrPeriod} = '10.97';

$Conf{BlackoutPeriods} = [
{
'hourBegin' => 5,
'hourEnd' => 19,
'weekDays' => [1,4],
},
{
'hourBegin' => 0,
'hourEnd' => 24.0,
'weekDays' => [0,2,3,5,6],
},
];

I'm specifically worried about a backup sneaking in at 24.0 during one of the blacked out days. As an alternative, is it absolutely required to put in hourBegin and hourEnd parameters? In other words, if I describe a blackout period as

{
'weekDays' => [0,2,3,5,6],
},

will that work?

Any suggestions/help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

John

jcoxen <backuppc-forum < at > backupcentral.com> wrote on 10/18/2011 10:57:03 AM:

I need to schedule backups for several servers to run after hours on
Monday and Thursday only. I want only Full backups, no
incrementals. I do not want any backups on any other days. Will
the following work?
'hourBegin' => 0,
'hourEnd' => 24.0,

Set it to 0 and 23.5. Backups only get started on the hour (see the wakeup period parameter). 0 -> 23.5 will cover the entire timeperiod. See the help surrounding hourBegin and hourEnd for more details.

I'm specifically worried about a backup sneaking in at 24.0 during
one of the blacked out days. As an alternative, is it absolutely
required to put in hourBegin and hourEnd parameters? In other
words, if I describe a blackout period as

{
'weekDays' => [0,2,3,5,6],
},

will that work?

Dunno. But I wouldn't do that. There's no reason to. If you read the help for hourBegin and hourEnd, you will see that it's not necessary. Just cover the hourly marks and you'll be fine.

Timothy J. Massey
Out of the Box Solutions, Inc.
Creative IT Solutions Made Simple!
[url=Arial]http://www.OutOfTheBoxSolutions.com[/url]
[url=Arial]tmassey < at > obscorp.com[/url] 22108 Harper Ave.
St. Clair Shores, MI 48080
Office: (800)750-4OBS (4627)
Cell: (586)945-8796

jcoxen <backuppc-forum < at > backupcentral.com> wrote on 10/18/2011 10:57:03 AM:

I need to schedule backups for several servers to run after hours on
Monday and Thursday only. I want only Full backups, no
incrementals.

Oh, and you might want to modify the e-mail interval. It's set to 3 days (well, 2.97 IIRC), and there's four days between Thursday and Monday.

Tim Massey
Out of the Box Solutions, Inc.
Creative IT Solutions Made Simple!
[url=Arial]http://www.OutOfTheBoxSolutions.com[/url]
[url=Arial]tmassey < at > obscorp.com[/url] 22108 Harper Ave.
St. Clair Shores, MI 48080
Office: (800)750-4OBS (4627)
Cell: (586)945-8796

"Set it to 0 and 23.5. Backups only get started on the hour (see the wakeup period parameter). 0 -> 23.5 will cover the entire timeperiod. See the help surrounding hourBegin and hourEnd for more details."

OK, so if my WakeupSchedule is set as follows:

$Conf{WakeupSchedule} = [1,2,3,4,19,20,21,22,23];

BackupPC will only start on the hour so 23.5 will work.

"Oh, and you might want to modify the e-mail interval. It's set to 3 days (well, 2.97 IIRC), and there's four days between Thursday and Monday."

Thanks, I missed that one. I've bumped it from 2.5 to 3.5.

I appreciate the help. Thanks,

John

jcoxen <backuppc-forum < at > backupcentral.com> wrote on 10/18/2011 12:33:14 PM:

OK, so if my WakeupSchedule is set as follows:

$Conf{WakeupSchedule} = [1,2,3,4,19,20,21,22,23];

Don't do that. It's a bad idea to change the Wakeup Schedule, and it's a *very* good idea to have the first WakeupSchedule entry be *outside* of your backup window. (I suggest 10 A.M., but it doesn't matter as long as it's some time when the backups will not be running.) The nightly jobs run then, and you *really* don't want them interfering with your backups-- or vice versa.

You make sure that your backup server does not run backups when you don't want it to with blackout periods, which you're doing. Messing with the Wakeup Schedule will have unintended consequences, and won't help you if you properly configure your blackout periods, anwyay!

I appreciate the help.

No problem. You're questions have been specific and you have obviously put some effort into answering them yourself first. It's nice to have questions like that for a change! (Right, Holger? )

Timothy J. Massey
Out of the Box Solutions, Inc.
Creative IT Solutions Made Simple!
[url=Arial]http://www.OutOfTheBoxSolutions.com[/url]
[url=Arial]tmassey < at > obscorp.com[/url] 22108 Harper Ave.
St. Clair Shores, MI 48080
Office: (800)750-4OBS (4627)
Cell: (586)945-8796

"Don't do that. It's a bad idea to change the Wakeup Schedule, and it's a *very* good idea to have the first WakeupSchedule entry be *outside* of your backup window. (I suggest 10 A.M., but it doesn't matter as long as it's some time when the backups will not be running.) The nightly jobs run then, and you *really* don't want them interfering with your backups-- or vice versa.

You make sure that your backup server does not run backups when you don't want it to with blackout periods, which you're doing. Messing with the Wakeup Schedule will have unintended consequences, and won't help you if you properly configure your blackout periods, anwyay!"

Interesting. I never changed the WakeupSchedule. I inherited this system a couple of year ago when I came on board and haven't really changed anything since it all has been working. I familiarized myself with the software and made sure that I was comfortable with what was happening when, why and how. I've added systems as we've turned up new servers and deleted them as we've decommisioned servers. Beyond that, I've left it pretty much alone. I'm a big believer in, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Now we're in the middle of some fairly significant changes to our infrastructure so I get to mess around with the server config.

So are you recommending that I go back to the default WakeupSchedule but rotated around so that it starts at 10?

John

On 10/18/2011 4:29 PM, jcoxen wrote:
So are you recommending that I go back to the default WakeupSchedule but rotated around so that it starts at 10?

You don't have to rotate it. The numbers don't have to be in order.
Just move 10 (or whatever time you want the BackupPC_nightly
housekeeping job to run) to the front of the list.

--
Bowie

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jcoxen <backuppc-forum < at > backupcentral.com> wrote on 10/18/2011 04:29:15 PM:

So are you recommending that I go back to the default WakeupSchedule
but rotated around so that it starts at 10?

Yes, but it's not a deal-killer: seeing as it's been running for years as-is, it'll be fine. I thought it was a new configuration and you did that. I'm with you: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. In this case, it's slightly broken, but not terribly. It affects performance more than anything.

What is happening is that the nightly process (which deletes old backups, among other things) is runnning at the same time as your backup. That causes the hard drive to thrash, and the backup will take longer (rather noticeably longer, depending on the size of your pool). Obviously not the end of the world, but not recommended.

Given that change, if and when you create a *new* BackupPC server, you might not want to blindly use your current configuration. The previous person seems to either liked to make configuration changes for the fun of it (or when they didn't really understand what they were doing), or didn't mind making big changes to solve smaller problems. Either way, that's probably not a configuration you want to swallow without looking.

Timothy J. Massey
Out of the Box Solutions, Inc.
Creative IT Solutions Made Simple!
[url=Arial]http://www.OutOfTheBoxSolutions.com[/url]
[url=Arial]tmassey < at > obscorp.com[/url] 22108 Harper Ave.
St. Clair Shores, MI 48080
Office: (800)750-4OBS (4627)
Cell: (586)945-8796

Bowie Bailey <Bowie_Bailey < at > BUC.com> wrote on 10/18/2011 05:01:48 PM:

On 10/18/2011 4:29 PM, jcoxen wrote:
So are you recommending that I go back to the default
WakeupSchedule but rotated around so that it starts at 10?

You don't have to rotate it. The numbers don't have to be in order.
Just move 10 (or whatever time you want the BackupPC_nightly
housekeeping job to run) to the front of the list.

Here's mine, which illustrates that: 10, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23

You can put it in whatever order you want. The way it is above, it's clear that there's a reason 10 is in the front: it's not random, and it's not in order. Smart people might wonder why, and then read the help to find out why!

With BackupPC, you have to give up a little control to get it to work best. Some people are like you (the original poster, that is) and want it to run at a specific time: "Every Monday and Thursday". It is *not* designed to work that way. (If you wanted incrementals in that mix, it would be impossible to do without scripting things *outside* of BackupPC, such as a cron job.) Some people just must hold onto the bad old days of tape backup when *everything* was launched by a cron job... forgetting what happens when you *miss* that single moment in time.

The wakeup schedule is another example of people trying to exercise total control over BackupPC. It's better to just let it do its job than try to restrict it.

Admittedly, there are annoyances with this. For example, a regular request is the ability to run a full backup on the last day of the month. You can't do that within BackupPC alone. I can certainly understand (e.g.) regulatory requirements for things like that. But it's not how BackupPC is designed to work.

Tim Massey
Out of the Box Solutions, Inc.
Creative IT Solutions Made Simple!
[url=Arial]http://www.OutOfTheBoxSolutions.com[/url]
[url=Arial]tmassey < at > obscorp.com[/url] 22108 Harper Ave.
St. Clair Shores, MI 48080
Office: (800)750-4OBS (4627)
Cell: (586)945-8796

Tim and Bowie,

Thank you both for your suggestions and explanations.

I have modified my WakeupSchedule only to the extent of putting '8' as the first entry. That shouldn't hurt anything and it does make much more sense to allow for a separate time for maintenance.

Tim,

Your comments about people trying to exert total control over BackupPC hit's pretty close to home. Between Regulatory requirements, company policy and employee work schedules I'm trying to get backups done within a specific window. I suppose I could use cron jobs but I'd prefer to keep everything under one roof - less chance of conflicts later on. Based on what I've read in the documentation and the answers I've gotten here, I should be able to change the config to meet my needs.

Thanks again,

John

Tim and Bowie,

Thank you both for your suggestions and explanations.

I have modified my WakeupSchedule only to the extent of putting '8' as the first entry. That shouldn't hurt anything and it does make much more sense to allow for a separate time for maintenance.

Tim,

Your comments about people trying to exert total control over BackupPC hit's pretty close to home. Between Regulatory requirements, company policy and employee work schedules I'm trying to get backups done within a specific window. I suppose I could use cron jobs but I'd prefer to keep everything under one roof - less chance of conflicts later on. Based on what I've read in the documentation and the answers I've gotten here, I should be able to change the config to meet my needs.

Thanks again,

John