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CHAPTER 8 History and Reports
With a product as robust as Backup Professional, you would think you could simply push a button and never have to think about backups again. Well, it is not that simple. There are a few things you need to consider as backups are processed. For one, you must ensure that you are getting good solid backups. A backup may fail for many reasons, including unavailable tapes and client machines. It is important to know when a backup fails so you can take the proper steps to correct the problem.

This is where reporting is useful. Reports are generated for failures and weekly summaries. Only scheduled backups are reported automatically. Reports must be generated manually for a backup initiated by a user. To manually generate a report from the Administration utility, select the [Misc->Reports] menu button to display the Generate Reports dialog (Figure 35).

8.1 Reports

FIGURE 35. Generate Reports Dialog

Reports are generated for failures on a particular day or week, for a weekly summary of backups and for the contents of a tape. You are generally interested in the failure and weekly summary reports. Select either of these report types and a day from the calendar to generate the report. Only days that contain backups will be selectable in the calendar. Reports are saved by default to the Backup Professional report directory. Press the [OK] button to generate and save the report. If the [View Now?] toggle button is selected, the report is also displayed to the screen.

You can create reports from backups by selecting the menu item [Misc->Reports] from the Administration utility. The Generate Reports dialog is displayed and allows you to choose the type of report by selecting an item from the Report Types section. The Output Specs section allows you to specify the output filename for which to save the report, and to indicate if you would like to view the report immediately by selecting the [View Now?] toggle button.

The output for the report is in HTML format and can be viewed at a later time using any HTML viewer such as NetscapeTM.

The Report Types are as follows:

8.1.1 Regular Reports

Tape Contents
Select the tape device from the Device combo box to generate the report. The [Tape Contents] report physically reads the tape in the specified device, comparing tape headers against the backup database giving details about the tape contents and any errors.
Weekly Summary
This generates a report of all backups that took place for the specified week. The days in the currently viewed month that contain backups are highlighted. Select any highlighted day from the calendar for the week, then click on the [OK] button to generate the report.
Failure Report
This is used to generate a list of failed backups for a specified day. The days in the currently viewed month that contain backup failures will be highlighted. Select the day in question from the calendar and click on the [Ok] button to generate the report.
FIGURE 36. Advanced Reports

8.1.2 Advanced Reports

Backups Per D2D
Purpose:
To provide an eays lookup for users at the backups present in the database for a D2D device and give detailed information of each.
Description:
This report displays the list of backups available in the database for the D2D device. The backups are sorted alphabetically with the client name. The GUI provices an option of choosing either a single device or all devices. It is a handy reference for administrators to have a quick look at the backup, its status, size, number of files and backup date for a particular client.
BareMetal
Purpose:
To report the information of the last successful BareMetal backup on Intel and Solaris platforms.
Description:
This report displays the LAST_BAREMETAL on file for an Intel client and LAST_MASTER for a Solaris client. It displays the backup number along with the size, date and also the number of baremetals that were performed for that client. It emulates a worksheet, which allows administrators to record the status of these important backups, whether they are present in house, or at some offsite location.
D2D Management
Purpose:
To identify the backups on a D2D device that are candidates for purging and provide the actual backup information available on the device.
Description:
This report displays a detailed device summary and lists the backups on that D2D device, sorted by date. It prints our the exact size occupied by the backup on the disk device and checks whether it is an eligible candidate to be purged in near future. If the backup is one of the LAST_xx (MASTER, BAREMETAL, INCREMENTAL) it cannot be purged and the comment field in the report indicates this message. This report has the option to choose either a single device or all devices. Also it has a compression field that should indicate if the backup is in a compressed format.
Disaster Recovery
Purpose:
To provide warning of all intel clients that do not have any baremetal backup on file and all non-intel clients not having a master backup.
Description:
This report gives a detailed list of all intel clients that do not have a baremetal backup on file and all non-intel clients those do nto have a master backup on file. This report is extremely useful as a project/action list for administrators to identify such clients and carry out the required backups before any disaster. It has anoption in the GUI to set the number of days within no backups were performed for the clients.
Last Backup
Purpose:
To display the last master, last baremetal and last incremental for each client in the database and identify what type is required for that client.
Description:
This report gives a list of last backups for each client present in the database. It prints out the backup date along with the backup number for the last master, last baremetal and last incremental. There is not information under the last baremetal for Solaris clients, since its master backup is used for a Bare Metal restore. The user can provide the number of days to find the backups performed since then. The comments field in the report prints messages about backup types that are absent for that client. If the user does not want information for unused clients from printing in the report, the priority of that client could be set to 1.
Reusable Tapes
Purpose:
To provide a handy list of reusable tapes that can be used for archiving purposes.
Description:
This report displays a list of all reusable tapes that are available to the administrator for archiving backups. It includes the tape labeled date and expiry date a long with the amount of space currently available on it. Apart from this, the

See "Schedule History" on page 120 to find out how to generate reports for scheduled backups.

Report output is specific to the report type. Figure 37 is an example of a weekly summary report.

FIGURE 37. Weekly Summary Report

8.1.3 Manual Scheduled Backup Reporting

When a group schedule is configured, reporting can be set to automatic. See "Schedule Grouping" on page 72 for a complete description of scheduled backups and their configuration. To manually create a schedule report, select the [Misc->Schedule History] menu from the Administration utility on the server. This displays the Schedule History dialog (Figure 41), from which you can select a group schedule to generate a report.

8.2 Backup History

You can view the known backup history for a host machine by selecting the [Misc->Backup History] menu item. The Backup Calendar dialog (Figure 38) is displayed and contains a client selector and a calendar.
FIGURE 38. Backup Calendar

This dialog allows you to:

Select a client
The machine for which you wish to view completed jobs
Select the month that the backup took place
By using the Year combo box, and the Month option menu
Select the day for which the backup took place
By selecting any highlighted day on the calendar

When a client is selected from the combo box, the Year and Month controls are adjusted so that you choose only dates that contain tasks. Once you have chosen the year and month, the days within the month that contain backups are highlighted. Choosing one of these dates displays the Backup History dialog (Figure 39).

FIGURE 39. Backup History Dialog
FIGURE 40. Backup History Chart

The Backup History dialog contains a scrolled list of backups and restores for the client. When you select one of the entries in the list, the area below the list displays information about the task. Split into two tabs, the first tab displays diagnostic messages from the task. The second tab display the summary. From the Summary tab you can select hypertext links that will take you to configuration/information dialogs for the type of item. For instance, selecting the link next to the Tape# item in Figure 39 displays the Tape Knowledgebase dialog and highlights that tape number so you can see what other backups exist on that particular tape.

The Diagnostic Messages tab displays all messages generated during the backup or restore task. By default, if the task had failed, this tab would be displayed first so that you could easily see the reason for the failure.

If you wish, you can view, in one list, all of the files that are contained in the backup by selecting the [Files...] button at the bottom of the dialog. This displays, in a scrolled window, each file that was archived. Before each filename is an image that indicates the file type. Double click on the directory image to expand the contents of the directory. Double click on an expanded directory to collapse the list of files for the directory. This information is for display purposes only.

8.3 Schedule History

Schedule history is used to view a report of the status for a group schedule. Select the
[Misc->Schedule History] menu from the Administration utility to view the reports. This will display the Schedule History dialog (Figure 41) which contains a calendar of previous schedules along with a list of schedules that ran on a selected day.
FIGURE 41. Schedule History Dialog

Selecting a day from the calendar will list all group schedules that ran on that day in the box to the right. A group schedule report can be viewed by selecting a group from the list. The report is shown in the text box at the bottom of the form.

The report consists of start/end times for the schedule and information on the final status of the backup for each client within the group. Each client entry in the report indicates the backup number assigned to the client backup. Clicking on the backup number will display its backup history information and is a shortcut to the Backup History dialog.

The amount of available history is dependent on the group schedule strategy and repetition frequency: that is, a weekly strategy will have a history of, at most, one week, and a daily strategy will have a history of one day. Each repetition of a client in a group schedule destroys its previous history as far as the schedule history is concerned. The backup records and backup data remain valid until such time as the tape that contains the backup has expired and been reused.

The schedule summary contains terse information for each client backup that was run for the group schedule. It indicates whether the backup succeeded and how long it took to complete, and it specifies the task and backup numbers associated with the backup. Selecting the backup number from the summary, such as Backup-172 in Figure 41, displays its backup history, which gives more detailed information on the backup.

The last line of the schedule summary displays the Schedule Consistency Stats. This displays total tasks completed and a transfer index. Index is a generated number to give you quick reference to the completeness of the schedule. So as daily schedules are reported, you can watch the stats, and a change will quickly indicate a problem with the schedule. You can then investigate further to determine the cause of the problem.


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