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  1. Home
  2. Veritas NetBackup™ Administrator's Guide, Volume I
  3. Section V. Configuring backups
  4. Creating backup policies
  5. Policy Attributes tab
  6. Take checkpoints every __ minutes (policy attribute)
Veritas NetBackup™ Administrator's Guide, Volume I

Take checkpoints every __ minutes (policy attribute)

By taking checkpoints during a backup, you can save time if the backup fails. By taking checkpoints periodically during the backup, NetBackup can retry a failed backup from the beginning of the last checkpoint. This is often quicker rather than restarting the entire job.

The checkpoint frequency indicates how often NetBackup takes a checkpoint during a backup. The default is 15 minutes. The administrator determines checkpoint frequency on a policy-by-policy basis. When you select the checkpoint frequency, balance the loss of performance due to frequent checkpoints with the possible time lost when failed backups restart. If the frequency of checkpoints affects performance, increase the time between checkpoints.

Checkpoints are saved at file boundaries and point to the next file in the list. Checkpoint restart is only available for the MS-Windows or Standard policy types. Check Take checkpoints every __ minutes to enable checkpoint restart. When the box is checked, NetBackup takes checkpoints during a backup job at the frequency you specify. If the box is not checked, no checkpoints are taken and a failed backup restarts from the beginning of the job. Checkpoint restart can also be used for restore jobs.

See Checkpoint restart for restore jobs.

The Global Attributes property, Schedule backup attempts, indicates the number of times that NetBackup tries to restart a failed backup.

See Global Attributes properties.

Note:

Checkpoints are saved at file boundaries and point to the next file in the list to be backed up. Checkpoints cannot occur in the middle of a file. After the file is backed up, the checkpoint is saved.

Note:

Checkpoints are not taken for a user-archive backup. If a user-archive backup resumes, it restarts from the beginning.

In the following situations, NetBackup starts a new job instead of resuming an incomplete job:

  • If a new job is due to run, or, for calendar-based scheduling, another run day has arrived.

  • If the time since the last incomplete backup was longer than the shortest frequency in any schedule for the policy.

  • If the time indicated by the Clean-up property, Move backup job from incomplete state to done state, has passed.

The following table describes the level of support for various policy attributes, storage, and clients for checkpoint restart. For an agent or option not listed, refer to the manual for that agent or option.

Table: Support for checkpoint restart

Item

Description

Basic disk staging

Checkpoint restart is supported for Stage I. Checkpoint restart is not supported for Stage II.

See About basic disk staging.

See About staging backups.

MS-Windows (policy type)

The following pertain to Windows clients:

  • Checkpoint restart is not supported for the backup selections that are indicated by a UNC path.

  • No checkpoints are taken during a system state backup.

  • No checkpoints are taken during a Windows disk image (raw) backup.

  • No checkpoints are taken for the remainder of the backup after NetBackup encounters Single-instance Store (SIS).

When an incremental backup resumes and completes successfully, the archive bits are cleared for the files that were backed up after the job resumes. However, the archive bits are not cleared for the files that were backed up before the resume. Since the archive bits remain, the files that were backed up before the backup resumes are backed up again during the next incremental backup.

Multiple copies (schedule attribute)

Checkpoint restart is supported for the policies that are configured to create multiple backup copies.

See Multiple copies (schedule attribute).

The last failed copy that contains a checkpoint can be resumed if a copy is configured to allow other copies to continue the job if the copy fails and subsequent checkpoints occur.

Snapshot Client (policy attribute)

Checkpoint restart is supported for use with local or alternate client backups. However, the following policy attributes are not supported:

  • Block Level incremental backups

  • Instant Recovery backup

See Snapshot Client and Replication Director (policy attributes).

Standard (policy type)

Checkpoint restart is supported for UNIX clients.

Synthetic backups (schedule attribute)

Checkpoint restart is not supported.

See Synthetic backup (schedule attribute).

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