Planning for policies

Policy configuration is flexible enough to meet the various needs of all the Cloud object store accounts in a NetBackup environment. To take advantage of this flexibility, take time to plan before starting to configure the policies.

The following table outlines the steps to take to ensure that you get optimal results from your policy configurations.

Table: Steps for planning policies

Step	Action	Description
Step 1	Gather information about the Cloud object store account.	Gather the following information about each bucket/container: The Account name: Credential and connection details mentioned in the account are used to access cloud resources using REST APIs during backup. An account is associated with a single region; hence, a policy can contain buckets or containers associated with that region only. The bucket/container names The approximate number of objects on each bucket/container to be backed up. The typical size of the objects. One account may contain a large amount of data in several objects, while the other accounts are smaller with a lesser number of objects. To avoid long backup times, include the larger account in one policy and the smaller one in another policy. It may be beneficial to create more than one policy for the larger account.
Step 2	Group the objects based on backup requirements	Divide the different objects in the accounts into groups according to the different backup and archive requirements.
Step 3	Consider the storage requirements	The NetBackup environment may have some special storage requirements that the backup policies must accommodate. The storage unit and volume pool settings apply to all the objects backed up by a policy. If objects have special storage requirements, create separate policies for the objects, even if other factors are the same, such as schedules.
Step 4	Configure a temporary staging location	See Configure a temporary staging location.
Step 5	Consider the backup schedule	Create additional backup policies if the schedules in one policy do not accommodate all the objects in an account. Consider the following factors when deciding to create additional policies: Best times for backups to occur. To back up different objects on different schedules may require additional policies with different time schedules. For example, create different policies for night-shift and day-shift objects. How frequently do the objects change? If some objects change more frequently than others, or new objects get added in the bucket/container more frequently, the difference may be enough to warrant creating another policy with a different backup frequency. How long do the backups need to be retained? Each schedule includes a retention setting that determines how long NetBackup keeps the objects that are backed up by the schedule. Because the schedule backs up all the objects in the backup selection list, all objects should have similar retention requirements. Do not include the objects whose full backups must be retained forever, together in a policy where full backups are retained for only four weeks.
Step 6	Optimize performance with multi-streaming	NetBackup's performance in your environment depends on three major factors: Network bandwidth between the backup host (media server) and the cloud storage service. The cloud server's capability to handle multiple API requests. The backup host's (media server) system memory (RAM). You must adjust the streams according to the number of objects that you are protecting, and your available system and network resources. NetBackup recommends 8 - 16 streams per policy. But you can specify the number of streams as per your environment.
Step 7	Select exactly what to back up.	You do not need to back up entire objects, unless required. Create queries to select and back up only the required object(s).

Planning for policies

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