NetWorker 19.7 Snapshot Management Integration Guide

Creating a snapshot backup action

A snapshot backup action performs a snapshot on a supported storage device, and then generates a save set entry for the snapshot-based backup in the NetWorker media database.

1. In the expanded left pane, select the policy's workflow, and then perform one of the following tasks in the right pane to start the Policy Action wizard:
   • If the action is the first action in the workflow, select Create a new action.
   • If the workflow has other actions, right-click an empty area of the Actions pane, and then select New.
   The Policy Action wizard opens on the Specify the Action Information page.
2. From the Action Type list, select Backup.
3. From the secondary action list, select Snapshot.
4. If you create the action as part of the workflow configuration, the workflow appears automatically in the Workflow box and the box is dimmed.
5. Specify the order of the action in relation to other actions in the workflow:
   • If the action is part of a sequence of actions in a workflow path, in the Previous box, select the action that should precede this action.
   • If the action should run concurrently with an action, in the Previous box, select the concurrent action, and then select the Concurrent checkbox.
6. Specify a weekly, monthly, or reference schedule for the action:

   • To specify a schedule for each day of the week, select Define option under Select Schedule and period as Weekly by day.

   • To specify a schedule for each day of the month, select Define option under Select Schedule and period as Monthly by day.
   • To specify a customized schedule to the action, select Select option under Select Schedule and choose a customized schedule using the drop-down menu that is already created under NSR schedule resource.
7. Specify the type of backup to perform on each day:
   • To specify a level on a specific day, click the backup type icon on the day.
   • To specify the same type of backup on each day, select the backup type from the list, and then click Make All.
   NOTE The schedule for a snapshot backup or discovery defines the days of the week or month on which to perform the snapshot backup or discovery. For a snapshot backup action, the schedule also defines the level of backup to perform on each day. This level also applies to the clone action, if created.

   The following table provides details on the backup type that each icon represents.

   Table 1. Backup type icons

   Icon	Label	Description
   	Full	Perform a full backup on this day. Full backups include all files, regardless of whether the files changed.
   	Skip	Do not perform a backup on this day.

8. Click Next.
   The Snapshot Options page appears.
9. From the Destination Storage Node list box, select the storage node with the devices on which to store the backup data.
10. From the Destination Pool list box, select the media pool in which to store the backup data.
11. From the Retention list box, specify the amount of time to retain the backup data.
    After the retention period expires, the save set is removed from the media database and the snapshot is deleted.
12. From the Minimum Retention Time list box, specify the minimum amount of time to retain the backup data.
    After the specified amount of time, an in-progress snapshot action can remove the snapshot from the storage device to ensure that there sufficient disk space is available for the new snapshot.
13. Click Next.
    The Specify the Advanced Options page appears.
14. In the Retries field, specify the number of times that NetWorker should retry a failed probe or backup action, before NetWorker considers the action as failed. When the Retries value is 0, NetWorker does not retry a failed probe or backup action.
    NOTE The Retries option applies to probe actions, and the backup actions for the Traditional and Snapshot action types. If you specify a value for this option for other actions, NetWorker ignores the values.
15. In the Retry Delay field, specify a delay in seconds to wait before retrying a failed probe or backup action. When the Retry Delay value is 0, NetWorker retries the failed probe or backup action immediately.
    NOTE The Retry Delay option applies to probe actions, and the backup actions for the Traditional and Snapshot action types. When you specify a value for this option in other actions, NetWorker ignores the values.
16. In the Inactivity Timeout field, specify the maximum number of minutes that a job that is run by an action can try to respond to the server.

    If the job does not respond within the specified time, the server considers the job a failure and NetWorker retries the job immediately to ensures that no time is lost due to failures.

    Increase the timeout value if a backup consistently stops due to inactivity. Inactivity might occur for backups of large save sets, backups of save sets with large sparse files, and incremental backups of many small static files.

    NOTE The Inactivity Timeout option applies to probe actions, and the backup actions for the Traditional and Snapshot action types. If you specify a value for this option in other actions, NetWorker ignores the value.
17. In the Parallelism field, specify the maximum number of concurrent operations for the clone action.The default value is 0 and the maximum value is 1000.
18. From the Failure Impact list, specify what to do when a job fails:
    • To continue the workflow when there are job failures, select Continue.
    • To stop the current action if there is a failure with one of the jobs, but continue with subsequent actions in the workflow, select Abort action.
      NOTE The Abort action option applies to probe actions, and the backup actions for the Traditional and Snapshot action types.
    • To stop the entire workflow if there is a failure with one of the jobs in the action, select Abort workflow.
    NOTE If any of the actions fail in the workflow, the workflow status does not appear as interrupted or canceled. NetWorker reports the workflow status as failed.
19. From the Send Notifications list box, select whether to send notifications for the action:
    • To use the notification configuration that is defined in the Policy resource to send the notification, select Set at policy level.
    • To send a notification on completion of the action, select On Completion.
    • To send a notification only if the action fails to complete, select On Failure.
20. In the Send notification attribute, when you select the On Completion option or On failure option, the Command box appears. Use this box to configure how NetWorker sends the notifications. You can use the nsrlog command to send the notifications to a log file or you can send an email notification.

    The default notification action is to send the information to the policy_notifications.log file. By default, the policy_notifications.log file is located in the /nsr/logs directory on Linux and in the C:\Program Files\EMC NetWorker\nsr\logs folder on Windows.

    Use the default mailer program on Linux to send email messages or the smtpmail application on Windows:

    • To send notifications to a file, type the following command, where policy_notifications.log is the name of the file:

      nsrlog -f policy_notifications.log

    • On Linux, to send an email notification, type the following command:

      mail -s subject recipient

    • On Window, to send a notification email, type the following command:

      smtpmail -s subject -h mailserver recipient1@mailserver recipient2@mailserver...

      where:

      • -s subject—Includes a standard email header with the message and specifies the subject text for that header. Without this option, the smtpmail program assumes that the message contains a correctly formatted email header and nothing is added.

      • -h mailserver—Specifies the hostname of the mail server to use to relay the SMTP email message.

      • recipient1@mailserver—Is the email address of the recipient of the notification. Multiple email recipients are separated by a space.

21. From the Soft Limit list, select the amount of time after the action starts to stop the initiation of new activities. The default value of 0 (zero) indicates no amount of time.
22. From the Hard Limit list, select the amount of time after the action starts to begin terminating activities. The default value of 0 (zero) indicates no amount of time.
23. Click Next.
    The Action Configuration Summary page appears.
24. Review the settings that you specified for the action, and then click Configure.