Backup levels 1-9

Hello Ken, the rules work like this:

Full = 0, incr = 9. Any level backup will backup all data since the most recent LOWER level backup. So differentials are done by effectively picking any number and using them each day, ie.

F 5 5 5 5 5 5 would be a diff every day, starting with a full

F I I I I I is thus the same as F 1 2 3 4 5 6

F I I I I I 5  is analogous to monthly full, daily incr, weekly diff

F I I I I I 1 I I I I I I 2 I I I I I I 3 I I I I I  would be for example a full, followed by incrementals (9), a diff since full, another week of incrementals, a diff since last diff, and so on.

HTH, James.

OK - I don't actually deal with the particulars of NDMP - but if that is the rule, then you are probably handling it as best you can. You may want to open a support case to confirm.

But, any day for which you have the same backup level as the previous day - you'll find it's not truly an incremental from the prior day, but rather an incremental from the previous lower level. Ie. if you have

Sun:F  Mon:1 Tues:1 Wed:2 Thurs:2 Fri:3 Sat:4 Sun:5... etc... then for example the Thursday '2' will backup everything changed since the Tuesday '1' - NOT the Wednesday '2' (same level). That being the case, if the plan is to save space, you may want to doubleup primarily on days when you expect the LEAST change since you'll be incremental from 2 days prior, not one. Hope that helps! Again, I can't speak for NDMP specfically but that sounds like your best bet.

Cheers, James.

Here is what I am trying to accomplish, this is for NDMP backups, which Incremetnal is not supported so using the backup levels to simulate Incrementals. I want to do FULL backups every other week with Incrementals in between so that's 13 incremetnals in between. If I do a F 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9, I still have 4 days til next FULL, that is why I added back 2 back levels.

F 1 1 2 2 3 4 5 5 6 7 7 8 9 F

Your approach of simulating a incremental backup schedule should be correct.

Any level backup refers back in time to a backup of higher level, highest level is full (reads level 0) as already mentioned here.

The exception is level incremental which refers back to any previous backup regardless of the level including previous level incremental.

(a little correction here: level incr is level 10, not 9 as mentioned here earlier)

However regarding NDMP backup please be prepared not to be surprised if any kind of level started in NetWorker is changed to a level 1 at the filer because there only full or differential is known as a backup level. This depends very much on the filer model and OS version installed there.

For I'm also not an NDMP specialist I'm unfortunately not able to tell you more details about this.

Had a similar problem. This post really helped address it for me. Thanks!

Hi ,

    The level backup is like today you have taken Level 3 backup and tomo u have taken Level 4 , it means it will take all the changes after Level 3 , Suppose on Monday u scheduled Full and in Wednesday you scheduled level 5 and in Friday you have Scheduled level 5  then Whats this will do is Monday will take Full backup and Wednesday  will check for any Level 1 to 4 has been happened or not then it will backeed up the changes after FUll and in Friday again it will check for Level 1 to 4 if not found will take the Changes from FUll to Friday . hope now its clear .

Rajesh S