Performance guidelines for NetBackup policies

The following policy items may have performance implications.

Table:

Policy items	Guidelines
Include and exclude lists	Consider the following: Do not use excessive wild cards in file lists. When wildcards are used, NetBackup compares every file name against the wild cards. The result may be a decrease in NetBackup performance. Instead of placing /tmp/* (Linux/UNIX) or C:\Temp\* (Windows) in an include or exclude list, use /tmp/ or C:\Temp. The inappropriate use of wildcards can also flood the policy execution manager (nbpem) with thousands of backup jobs for a single client. This situation causes delays in all job processing as nbpem takes the necessary actions to start a backup job. Use exclude lists to exclude large unwanted files. Reduce the size of your backups by using exclude lists for the files your installation does not need to preserve. For instance, you may decide to exclude temporary files. Use absolute paths for your exclude list entries, so that valuable files are not inadvertently excluded. Before adding files to the exclude list, confirm with the affected users that their files can be safely excluded. Should disaster (or user error) strike, not being able to recover files costs much more than backing up extra data. When a policy specifies that all local drives be backed up (ALL_LOCAL_DRIVES), nbpem initiates request with nbjm to connect to the client and runs bpmount -i to get a list of mount points. Then nbpem initiates a job with its own unique job identification number for each mount point. Next the client bpbkar starts a stream for each job. Only then does NetBackup read the exclude list. When the entire job is excluded, bpbkar exits with status 0, stating that it sent zero of zero files to back up. The resulting image files are treated the same as the images from any other successful backup. The images expire in the normal fashion when the image header files' expiration date specifies they are to expire. Use exclude lists to exclude files from regular backups if the files are already backed up by a NetBackup database agent backup.
Critical policies	For catalog backups, identify the policies that are crucial to recovering your site in the event of a disaster. For more information on catalog backup and critical policies, refer to the NetBackup Administrator's Guide, Volume I. See Guidelines for managing the primary server NetBackup catalog.
Schedule frequency	Minimize how often you back up the files that have not changed, and minimize your consumption of bandwidth, media, and other resources. To do so, limit full backups to monthly or quarterly, followed by weekly cumulative-incremental backups and daily incremental backups.

Policy items

Guidelines

Include and exclude lists

Consider the following:

Do not use excessive wild cards in file lists.
When wildcards are used, NetBackup compares every file name against the wild cards. The result may be a decrease in NetBackup performance. Instead of placing /tmp/* (Linux/UNIX) or C:\Temp\* (Windows) in an include or exclude list, use /tmp/ or C:\Temp. The inappropriate use of wildcards can also flood the policy execution manager (nbpem) with thousands of backup jobs for a single client. This situation causes delays in all job processing as nbpem takes the necessary actions to start a backup job.
Use exclude lists to exclude large unwanted files.
Reduce the size of your backups by using exclude lists for the files your installation does not need to preserve. For instance, you may decide to exclude temporary files. Use absolute paths for your exclude list entries, so that valuable files are not inadvertently excluded. Before adding files to the exclude list, confirm with the affected users that their files can be safely excluded. Should disaster (or user error) strike, not being able to recover files costs much more than backing up extra data.
When a policy specifies that all local drives be backed up (ALL_LOCAL_DRIVES), nbpem initiates request with nbjm to connect to the client and runs bpmount -i to get a list of mount points. Then nbpem initiates a job with its own unique job identification number for each mount point. Next the client bpbkar starts a stream for each job. Only then does NetBackup read the exclude list. When the entire job is excluded, bpbkar exits with status 0, stating that it sent zero of zero files to back up. The resulting image files are treated the same as the images from any other successful backup. The images expire in the normal fashion when the image header files' expiration date specifies they are to expire.
Use exclude lists to exclude files from regular backups if the files are already backed up by a NetBackup database agent backup.

Critical policies

For catalog backups, identify the policies that are crucial to recovering your site in the event of a disaster. For more information on catalog backup and critical policies, refer to the NetBackup Administrator's Guide, Volume I.

See Guidelines for managing the primary server NetBackup catalog.

Schedule frequency

Minimize how often you back up the files that have not changed, and minimize your consumption of bandwidth, media, and other resources. To do so, limit full backups to monthly or quarterly, followed by weekly cumulative-incremental backups and daily incremental backups.

Performance guidelines for NetBackup policies

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