There is also some danger in setting excludes in avtar.cmd because these excludes are global. As an example, we recently had a case come through where a customer had excluded .dat files in avtar.cmd on some of their clients. This exclude pattern was applied during the customer's VSS System State backups (since avtar reads the data directly from disk with this plug-in) and the .dat files containing the user registry hives were never backed up. When the customer ran a DR test, the restore completed successfully but the system was obviously not in a good state.
Ian,
but one can be very specific and provide direct path, for example C:\myapp\*.dat ? That's acceptable ?
Absolutely. There's no problem with adding specific excludes, you just need to be cautious putting anything very general (like the above-mentioned .dat exclude) into avtar.cmd.
You can't use avtar.cmd to exclude databases -- avtar.cmd excludes don't work with plug-ins like avsql that feed avtar a data stream. If avtar doesn't read the data directly from disk, there's no way for it to apply the excludes. It's possible to override the group dataset for specific clients. I would recommend taking this approach instead.
There is also some danger in setting excludes in avtar.cmd because these excludes are global. As an example, we recently had a case come through where a customer had excluded .dat files in avtar.cmd on some of their clients. This exclude pattern was applied during the customer's VSS System State backups (since avtar reads the data directly from disk with this plug-in) and the .dat files containing the user registry hives were never backed up. When the customer ran a DR test, the restore completed successfully but the system was obviously not in a good state.
Ian Anderson Thanks for your valuable suggestion, although I am aware of override group dataset but I rely more upon using avatar.cmd, however if it is not possible in case of Windows SQL plugin, then I will have to opt for the override option.
J_H_
2 Intern
•
498 Posts
0
May 22nd, 2014 07:00
yes you can do that
but you have to make the exclude ON the server
on windows
make a file
/avs/var/avtar.cmd
make sure it is a cmd (and you don't get the hidden .txt after it)
add a line
--exclude=
if your path has a space in it put it in double quotes
example
--exclude="C:\My Document"
lookup in the manual or help on how to do excludes there is wild carding that you can use
once you do this and do a run - you can look at the log and see where it reads and adds the exclude for that server from your avtar.cmd
suggest you read up on the avtar.cmd and exclude options to make sure you get what you need.
"Never rely on someone's opinion - verify for yourself"
dynamox
9 Legend
•
20.4K Posts
0
May 22nd, 2014 07:00
Ian,
but one can be very specific and provide direct path, for example C:\myapp\*.dat ? That's acceptable ?
J_H_
2 Intern
•
498 Posts
0
May 22nd, 2014 07:00
well he did not see he was doing a sql backup - but it appeared to me to be a filesystem backup.
on that you can exclude the *.mdf.
so that was a bad assumption on my part that it was a FS backup.
my apologizes
ionthegeek
2 Intern
•
2K Posts
0
May 22nd, 2014 07:00
Absolutely. There's no problem with adding specific excludes, you just need to be cautious putting anything very general (like the above-mentioned .dat exclude) into avtar.cmd.
ionthegeek
2 Intern
•
2K Posts
1
May 22nd, 2014 07:00
You can't use avtar.cmd to exclude databases -- avtar.cmd excludes don't work with plug-ins like avsql that feed avtar a data stream. If avtar doesn't read the data directly from disk, there's no way for it to apply the excludes. It's possible to override the group dataset for specific clients. I would recommend taking this approach instead.
There is also some danger in setting excludes in avtar.cmd because these excludes are global. As an example, we recently had a case come through where a customer had excluded .dat files in avtar.cmd on some of their clients. This exclude pattern was applied during the customer's VSS System State backups (since avtar reads the data directly from disk with this plug-in) and the .dat files containing the user registry hives were never backed up. When the customer ran a DR test, the restore completed successfully but the system was obviously not in a good state.
ionthegeek
2 Intern
•
2K Posts
0
May 22nd, 2014 08:00
No need to apologize! I really value all your contributions here.
DheerajSA
3 Posts
0
May 22nd, 2014 20:00
Ian Anderson Thanks for your valuable suggestion, although I am aware of override group dataset but I rely more upon using avatar.cmd, however if it is not possible in case of Windows SQL plugin, then I will have to opt for the override option.