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May 28th, 2013 00:00
NMM 2.4 VSS filesystem backup, clear archive flag
I have some clients with the 8.0.1 NetWorker client installed together with NMM 2.4sp1. Although I intend to use NMM2.4 to backup SQL using the VDI method, I also need to backup file systems on those clients.
I've read the guides, and I can successfully backup the file systems using the nsrsnap_vss_save command. However, it appears the archive bit is not cleared even though the backup is set to full backup. I fully realise that a VSS backup is not a tradtional file system traversal, and this can be expected behaviour. EMC support has confirmed this.
Now, I have some DBAs riding on the fact that the old method using the save command actually cleared the archive bit after a full backup. They are using scripts to clear temporary files, based on the archive bit.
I'm looking for any hints or hidden options on how to achive this. From Microsoft documentation it seems there are two types of VSS snapshots, Copy and Full, where the latter is supposed to clear the archive bit.
CarlosRojas
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May 28th, 2013 04:00
Hi,
NMM backups rely on VSS, meaning that NMM is just a requestor here.
VSS framework eventually after a full backup will change the bitlocker from "A" to "N".
A= Archive
N= Normal
When the backup completes, the "A" attribute gets changed to "N", meaning that the file has not changed since the last backup. As soon as the file gets modified, the attribute gets back to "A".
Hope that helps.
Thank you,
Carlos
sechm
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May 28th, 2013 07:00
Well, that's the problem. The backed up files after a "full" backup (ie a VSS backup with a full schedule) do not have their archive bit changed. They remain in the modified state, even after a full backup. These files are SQL dumps which are created once and then never changed. The point of the entire procedure for the DBAs is that they have a script that checks which files have the Archive bit cleared (ie backed up) and then deletes these files to not fill up the dump disk.
ble1
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May 28th, 2013 12:00
Next release of NMM will be module only thing - meaning NW client and NMM will finally coexist so fs backup will be done using NW client and NMM will be used for DB backups. If you will use VDI, then forget about dumps. If you plan to continue with dumps, forget about NMM.
CarlosRojas
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May 29th, 2013 00:00
One question. Why the DBA is using dumps instead of running VDI backups?
With VDI you don't need to create dumps, and logs would be truncated after the backup if FULL recovery mode is selected If any other recovery method is set for the DB's then no need to truncate the logs.
Thank you,
Carlos