NDMP backup schedule

If you are lucky if you have the appropriate filer vendor, because ... (from the Admin Guide):

     Each NAS supports full and level 1-9 backups.

     EMC Celerra, Isilon, and NetApp filers only support incremental level backups.

In the second case the configuration will be easy - if not you are stuck with the above schedule as NW only has 9 differential levels available. In this case, you run incrementals from day 2..9. However, if you switch back to level 1 the result will be a true differential ... which could become almost as huge as a full.

With respect to different browse/retention policies - this will not be possible per client definition. Policies apply to client save sets, but not for a specific level. If you really want to achieve that, you can delete the older save sets via a script or recycle these volumes ... if you can. But consider that the effort will become huge. And it could well be that you will sooner or later need to recover from the 'early incrementals' within the backup cycle. IMHO this does not make sense to me.

Bingo,

Thanks for your answer.

We are in the second case, we have Isilon X410 with A100 backup accelerator.

I know that switching back to level 1 will result in a true differential backup...but which backup level do you suggest for the remaining days? I cannot run a full backup more than once a month.

Client savesets are saved in two pools:

Incremental: for all incremental and differential backups

Complete: for full backups.

I have read the following on networker documentation:

"The pool policy is considered for original save sets but is utilized only if the period defined by the policy is longer the retention policy's period defined by the client resource"

Based on that, I would like to put 2 weeks retention for the client which will then be overwritten by the retention time of each pool (Retention policy for pool "Complete" is 1 month and for "Incremental" 2 weeks).

The browse policy will stay 1 month for the client, just retention time will change.

Thanks

What is so special about first Friday of the month that it deserves to be retained 1m and rest 2 weeks?  Of course, you can retain that way data for 7 weeks while if you would keep everything for 1 month it would be two months.  However, you will see (well, should see) quite lower amount of data if you use incremental so keeping for 1 month would make sense even for incremental backup.

In my view, if data really really needs to be kept for 1 month, then this property of data is assigned equally to data which is there on 1st of the month and any other day of the month.  By introducing different retentions per level, you are discriminating that property.