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CHAPTER 5 Setup and Configuration
Backup Professional configuration is performed on the server by using the Administration utility from bpmenu.

This program is also used to view completed backups and monitor running jobs. See "Task Monitor and Administration" on page 83. The sections that follow provide a tutorial for Backup Professional setup and configuration.

5.1 Configuration Tutorial

5.1.1 Configuration Worksheet

This helps you to gather information about the server and clients. Use the worksheet in Figure 11 to predetermine responses during installation, setup, and configuration.
FIGURE 11. Sample Worksheet

5.2 Adding Clients and Devices

FIGURE 12. Configuration Dialog (showing devices)

The first time the Administration utility is executed, you are taken to the Configuration dialog (Figure 12) where you can add clients, tape and disk devices. At any other time, you can get to this dialog by selecting the [Setup->Configure] menu. The Configuration dialog modifies clients or devices depending on the tab that is selected. By default, the Tape Devices tab is visible along with its fields. Below the devices and clients tabs is a list from which you select a device or client to modify. Selecting an item in the list will fill the values for the fields in the form. After modifying the fields, you save the changes using the [Save] button.

5.2.1 About the Tutorial Scenario

This tutorial will take you step-by-step through a typical configuration. The network configuration consists of a SCO Unix machine named fred as the Backup Professional server. Two SCSI tape drives are directly connected to the server. The first drive is a 4mm DAT tape and the second is an 8mm Exabyte tape. Three machines on the network are Backup Professional clients. These are a Sun Unix machine named barney, a Novell PC named betty, and an Microsoft Windows PC named wilma. Each client is connected to a local TCP network and is known to the server. A visual representation for this scenario is shown in Figure 13.
FIGURE 13. Tutorial Scenario Illustration

Figure 14 on page 63 shows the data that is used in the tutorial to set up and configure Backup Professional.

FIGURE 14. Completed Worksheet For This Scenario

5.2.2 Steps to Configuration

After installing the server software on fred and the client software on each of the clients, run bpmenu, start the Administration utility, and select the [Setup->Configure] menu. This will display the Configuration dialog with the Tape Devices tab form being active. During the server installation, the default device was added to the configuration. This device is displayed in the list at the bottom of the dialog. Assuming the 4mm_Tape was configured by you during installation, we will move on to the configuration of the second tape drive, 8mm_Tape.

5.2.3 Devices Configuration

1. Make sure the Tape Devices tab is selected in the Configuration dialog.
2. Configure the 8mm Exabyte tape drive by pressing the [New] button at the bottom of the dialog. This will clear the Tape Devices form and allow you to enter information about the device.
3. Enter the device nickname in the first field of the form. This is the name you will use anytime you must select a device. This can be called anything you would like, but cannot be the same as another configured device nickname and should not contain any spaces. In our example, we call it 8mm_Tape.
4. Enter in the Rewind Device field the full path to the device that rewinds the tape on close. In our example, it will be /dev/rStp1.
5. Enter the full path to the device that will NOT rewind on close in the No-Rewind Device field. In our example, it will be /dev/nrStp1.
6. Enter the full path to the device where low-level tape commands should be performed. Some machines do not have this as a separate device. In this case, you may enter the value that was used for the No Rewind Device. In our example, we will use /dev/xStp1 because SCO Unix does use command devices.
7. The next field, Capacity, indicates the total number of kilobytes that may be written to a tape for this particular device. The value defaults to kilobytes, but you may enter a number followed by G, M, or K to specify the size in gigabytes, megabytes, or kilobytes respectively. Alternatively, you can select a common size from the combo box by clicking on the arrow button next to this field.
Determining the correct size of the tape drive can be tricky. You must know if the device will do hardware compression or not. Without compression, an 8mm tape holds around five to seven gigabytes of data. With hardware compression, the manufacturers say one tape will hold eight gigabytes of data. In our example, we will say the drive is doing hardware compression and will hold eight gigabytes of data, and we will enter the value 8G.
8. Tape Block Size field indicates the size of the chunks of data that are written to the tape. The larger the value, the faster the backup and the greater amount of memory that will be needed by the computer and the tape drive. A value of 240 is a good starting point, and most people are happy with that. If you set the value too high, you will have backup failures because the SCSI bus cannot handle the block or not enough memory can be allocated for the block. We recommend using the value of 240 for the block size. Solaris users should use 120 if they are planning on using Solar Shield for bare-metal recovery.
9. SCSI Block Size indicates the blocking mode for the tape drive. This value depends on your tape units capabilities. Generally, most SCSI tapes support 0, 512, 1024, and 4096. The value of 0 means that the tape will write in variable mode. That is, each block of data it receives determines the block size to be written on the tape. Other block sizes, such as 1024, specify the exact block size that the tape unit will use when writing data. You should usually set this value to 1024 for most 4mm and 8mm tape drives. DLT drives should be set to variable mode (SCSI Block Size of 0). You can find this information in the hardware specifications for your tape unit. If the device is not a SCSI tape, this value will be ignored.
10. Select the [Device Is Tape?] toggle to indicate the device is a tape drive and not something else, like a disk file. In our example, we select this field to mark it as a tape.
11. Select the [Device is SCSI?] toggle to specify that the tape device is connected to the SCSI bus. In our example, we are using an 8mm SCSI Helical Scan Exabyte drive.
12. You can enable or disable the device using the [Online?] toggle. When the device is marked online, Backup Professional will attempt to use the device when requested. When not marked online, the device will not be available. We want to use the device, so our example will mark it as online.
13. If the device is a tape jukebox or autochanger, the [Use Juke?] button should be checked. Having the device marked as a jukebox allows you to edit the jukebox configuration after you save the device record.
14. The Description field may contain any descriptive information that you desire about the device. This value will be displayed in some of the reports generated by Backup Professional. In our example, we will use "Exabyte 8mm Tape Drive" as the description.
15. When you are satisfied with the information you have entered into the form, you may press the [Save] button at the bottom of the dialog to save the device record. After you save the device record, if the [Use Juke?] button is checked, the jukebox configuration dialog will be displayed. See "Working With Jukeboxes" on page 153 for a description of how to set up and configure a jukebox.
16. Sometimes it is difficult to determine if one device is the same physical device as another. This occurs frequently in Unix when two device names refer to the same unit but specify different device parameters, such as rewind/no-rewind, etc. When modifying a device in the Configuration dialog, the [Same As...] button is available. This will allow you to indicate if the device is physically the same as an already configured device. This will keep Backup Professional from having two processes writing to the same device, which could render the tape useless with nobody knowing why. The [Same As...] button displays a dialog to allow you to select one or more devices that should be considered the same.
The keyboard/mouse sequence, <Ctrl><MB1> lets you select/deselect noncontiguous items from the list. You can also press and drag <MB1> to select contiguous items. Press the [Ok] button to make your selection permanent. This scenario should not be of any interest to you unless you have an extremely complicated configuration situation.

If you have more devices to add, repeat steps 2-16.

5.2.4 Setting the Default Device

You must designate one of your devices as the default device. The default device is displayed by programs when the user is selecting the device to use for the task. You may set a default device only after the tape device has been configured using steps 2-13 in section 5.2.3 or after a disk device is configured using the instructions detailed in section 5.2.5.

In our example, we want to use the 8mm_Tape as the default device. Select the [File->Default Device] menu from the Configuration dialog, which displays the Set Default Device dialog (Figure 15). Select the 8mm tape from the combo box and press the [Make Default] button at the bottom of the form.

FIGURE 15. Set Default Device Dialog

5.2.5 Setting Up Disk-to-Disk Devices

You create a disk-to-disk (D2D) device in a similar fashion as creating a tape device. This is done through either the XWindow or the character interface. By default if a device is created and it is not a tape device it is converted to a D2D device. Your license will dictate the aggregate capacity of all disk devices you can create. Please see heading 5.2.8 for more information on licensing of the D2D feature.

After giving the D2D device a nickname (this can be any name by which you will recognize the device) put the name of the folder in which you want archives stored in the field called Folder. This must be the actual path structure pointing to the directory in which D2D backup jobs are stored. In our example in Figure 16 we see a path of /backups/disk5/. Please make sure that the trailing slash is included as part of the path.

When configuring a D2D device you must set the capacity. The capacity is very important and governs how much disk-to-disk data is placed into the D2D device. If, for example, you specify 100 GB, the D2D driver will manage to that capacity and will assure that the data in the D2D folder (directory) does not exceed the capacity limit you set. In the Capacity field, enter a number such as 100GB to dictate the size of the disk device you are creating. If your server does not have enough disk space available to create a disk device at the capacity you specify, Backup Professional will tell you the maximum amount of space available when you attempt to save the device configuration.

FIGURE 16. Disk Device Configuration Dialog

Please consider each disk device as a virtual tape. As a virtual tape, each disk device is managed to a finite capacity. This allows the end user to determine how many backup jobs are stored in a disk device before purging begins (see 5.2.7). For example, if you want to keep two weekly master backups and their associated daily incrementals in a specific disk device, you must size the device to hold this amount of data. When the disk device reaches its capacity limit, the older jobs will be purged to make room for the current job about to be backed up. The virtual tape concept also allows a viewing of all backups to the device using the Tape Contents History feature.

Large amounts of disk space can be divided up into multiple sections used by corresponding D2D devices, thus each device can be responsible for a group of computers.

If using the character interface to setup disk devices you will need to populate the fields No-Rewind Device, Rewind Device and Control Device. Place the actual path name to the disk device directory in the No-Rewind Device field. You can put anything you want in the fields Rewind Device and Control Device as these will be overwritten when you save the D2D device. The Control Device will be set to /dev/null. The Rewind Device will be the same as the No-Rewind Device for D2D devices. The block size should be set to 120. The IS SCSI [] should not be checked and the SCSI block size is not applicable.

For adding disk-to-disk devices in batch mode, please see the appendix on detailed instructions on how to perform this.

5.2.6 Disk-to-Disk Multithreading Support

The D2D driver can take advantage of multiple concurrent threads of execution. This means many clients can backup and restore data from the same D2D device concurrently. This greatly shortens the time that it takes a scheduled backup with multiple clients to run. It is especially useful for schedules that contain many incremental backups as each client computer running incrementals can take time to find files that have actually changed.

Multithreading support requires a change to your license. Without this change, only one backup or restore is allowed to a D2D device at one time.

When multithreading support is turned on, it may be necessary to set the number of concurrent backups being fed to a disk device. For example, you may feed three backups simultaneously from clients on a 100Mb network link. You may allow more concurrent backups when clients attached at Gigabit Ethernet speeds are backing up to a specific disk device. The number of simultaneous backups are individually set for each disk device by editing the MaxConcurrentBackups setting in the admin->setup->settings->disk_device_name area of the Backup Professional menu. The disk device name will be the nickname you gave your configured disk device.

5.2.7 Disk-to-Disk Purging Driver

The D2D purging driver allows you to easily and effectively manage disk space for the D2D disk devices. A D2D disk device is a folder where disk archives are kept. The purging driver is called before a backup actually begins and it will purge the old archives until enough room is created for the new backup. It estimates the size of the new backup based on past history. If a master backup is being run, it will look up the size of the last master backup and use this as an estimate. It will remove this much data from the folder to create space for the backup. By default, the purging driver will not remove the last master or the last incremental.The purging driver kicks off during a backup when the physical disk capacity is reached.

If the disk capacity limit is reached during a backup job, the job will be paused to allow the purging driver to free up additional space, after which the backup job will continue.

If the D2D purging driver cannot accurately estimate the capacity needed for the new backup, it uses a default setting. The default setting is 2000 megabytes. This setting is called DefaultPurgeMegs and can be changed from the bpmenu->setup->settings->disk_device_name menu.

Within each disk device there is a hidden file named .purge_log which tracks the amount of data the purging engine determines is needed and which old jobs are purged before a backup begins. This file can be viewed using an editor such as vi. The .purge_log is especially helpful when troubleshooting the purge process. For example, the log may tell you that the jobs available for purging are all critical jobs (last masters or last incrementals) which cannot be purged. This may indicate that you need to increase the capacity of your disk device.

5.2.8 Disk-to-Disk Capacity Based Licensing Option

The D2D devices are governed by a capacity based license. The license is enforced when you create D2D devices. You can create as many D2D devices as you need within the capacity limits of your license. The license feature string will contain an entry D2D=xxxG, where xxx equals the disk device aggregate capacity in gigabytes.

5.2.9 Client Configuration

FIGURE 17. Configuration Dialog (showing clients)

The Configuration dialog allows you to add or modify tape devices and clients that will be known to the server. Before you can back up a client, it must be initialized through this dialog. Follow the steps below to add a new client:

1. In the Configuration dialog, select the clients form by clicking on the Clients tab. This displays the clients form (Figure 17) and lists any configured clients at the bottom of the dialog. Using the Sample Worksheet Figure 14 on page 63, we will enter values for the client barney.
2. Press the [New] button at the bottom of the form to configure a new client. This clears the clients form, allowing you to enter new values.
3. Enter the name of the client in the first field of the form called Client Name. This can be a fully qualified hostname (barney.bedrock.net) or a simple hostname (barney), if the client is in the same network domain as the server. Either way, the client must be known to the network or you get an error.
4. Machine Type and OS Type are determined when the client record is saved. These values are read-only in this form.
5. You may enable or disable the client from Backup Professional by way of the Status field combo box. Disabling a client indicates it is not available for back up or restore. A task will fail if an attempt is made to back up or restore a disabled client. We want to back up and restore this client, so we select Enabled as the status.
6. Once you are satisfied with the content of the Client Configuration form, press the [Save] button at the bottom of the dialog to save the client record.

Repeat steps 1-7 for any additional clients. When a client is registered through the Administration utility, it will query the client for machine type and OS type, regardless of what was entered in steps 4 and 5 above.

5.3 Scheduling Automated Backups

Before configuring a schedule, it is very important for you to ensure that Backup Professional is working properly. You may do this by queueing a few backups for each client and watching their progress and status from the Administration utility. If all goes well with the backups, you may then configure your automated backup schedules.

5.3.1 Schedule Theory

A backup schedule can be thought of as a group of machines that are backed up to a specific device. The group schedule is run at a certain time each day. Every day, tasker, which is responsible for executing the schedules will check each group's start time. When it is time to start a group's schedule, tasker will check each client within the group and, depending on the client's frequency, determine if the client's backup needs to be run.
FIGURE 18. Schedule Diagram

Figure 18 illustrates two machines in the accounting department. This schedule will run at 11:30pm each night and backup to the device 8mm_Tape. For example, Monday through Friday at 11:30pm, the clients fred and wilma will run incremental backups. On Sunday, wilma will run a master; fred will run a master on Saturday.

5.3.2 Schedule Grouping

A backup schedule contains two components. The first component names the group and specifies the start time, the device to use for the backup, and reporting information. The second component is a list of clients to back up and their corresponding execution frequencies.

5.3.3 Schedule Worksheets

Table 6 and Table 7 can be used to enter the information you will need when setting up backup schedules. Table 6 is used to determine how each group is configured. Table 7 defines the backup frequency and type for each client of a particular group.
TABLE 6. Group Schedule Worksheet
Title Primary Device Start TimeHour of Day Failure Report?Print/Mail/None Backup Smry?Print/Mail/None










TABLE 7. Client for Group =
Client Type Frequency Frequency Element Verify After?Lev.1/Bit/None




































Duplicate the client table for each group schedule that is defined.

Access to the scheduler in the Administration utility is gained by selecting the
[Setup->Scheduler] menu.

FIGURE 19. Schedule Dialog

The Schedule dialog (Figure 19) lists the configured schedules. You add a new group schedule by pressing the [New] button and you modify a group by selecting a group from the list and pressing the [Modify] button. Adding or modifying a group will display the Modify Schedule dialog (Figure 20) where elements of the schedule are specified.

FIGURE 20. Modify Schedule Dialog

The Modify Schedule dialog contains the following items:

Title
Indicates the name of the group schedule. This name is used in the generated reports.
Primary Device
The device that is used to back up each client.
Enabled
If this is not set, the entire group schedule will not run. It is also possible to disable individual clients through the client setup dialog.
Daily Start Time
This is the time the group schedule is launched by tasker. Every client within the group whose frequency is due will be backed up. The time is specified in a 24-hour format.
Reports
Indicate the report(s) to be generated for the group schedule. Delivery of the report is specified by the option menus adjacent to each report type. You may choose to deliver the report by sending e-mail to a user, or by printing directly to a printer. The e-mail recipient and printer are globally specified through the master initialization file and are listed here as a reference. You may modify these values by selecting the [Modify Ini Files] from the [Setup] menu on the main screen. The values are found in the Unattended Backup Information section in the file $BPDIR/bpinit/master.ini.
Commands
Specify the commands to execute on the server before and/or after the group schedule is run. See "Before/After Commands Specification" on page 331 for a complete description of how before and after commands can be used.

5.3.4 Adding Clients to a Group Schedule

Addition of clients to the group schedule is done using the small Clients subwindow in the lower right corner of the main Modify Schedule dialog. In this subwindow, you note a list of clients that belong to the group schedule. To add a client to a group schedule, select the [New] button. This will display the Client Schedule Strategy dialog, from which you select the client to add and set its default strategy. When creating a new schedule, the client selector is not available until you initially press the [Save] button at the bottom of the Modify Schedule dialog.
FIGURE 21. Schedule Client Selector

You use this same subwindow (Figure 21) to modify a client's schedule once it has been added to the group. This is done by selecting a client from the list and pressing the [Edit] button. Editing a client is described in "Modifying Client Components" on page 77.

5.3.4.1 Specifying a Client Strategy

FIGURE 22. Client Strategy Dialog

The initial client schedule is determined by selecting an appropriate backup strategy. You must select one of the available backup strategies from the [Strategy] option menu (Figure 22). If none of these suits your needs, go ahead and select the best fit; you can modify the backup later. Modifying a client strategy is explained in "Modifying Client Components" on page 77. The available strategies are:

M/I Weekly/Daily
Master backup on Saturday; Incremental Monday through Friday
M/I BiWeekly/Daily
Master backup on every other Saturday; Incremental Monday through Friday
M/I Monthly/Weekly
Master backup on first of month; Incremental every Monday
M/I Qtrly/Weekly
Master backup first day of every quarter; Incremental every Monday
M/ Last Day of Month
Master backup on the last day of each month
M/ First Work Day of Month
Master backup on the first weekday of the month
M/ Last Work Day of Month
Master backup on the last weekday of the month
M/ Quarterly
Master backup on the first day of each quarter
M/ First Work Day of Qtr
Master backup on the first weekday of each quarter
M/ Last Work Day of Qtr
Master backup last weekday of quarter
ParaChute Monthly
Monthly ParaChute backup. See "BareMetal Disaster Recovery: Intel® Platforms" on page 263 for a full description of ParaChute backups.

Once you have specified a new client and backup strategy, press the [OK] button to add the client to the group.

5.3.4.2 Client Priority

When configuring a client in versions of the software released after July 2003, you have the opportunity to set a priority value (0-1000). Higher priority clients will go first in a schedule.

5.3.4.3 Modifying Client Components

You can make modifications to a client's schedule by choosing the client from the Schedule Client Selector list in the Modify Schedule dialog and pressing the [Edit] button. A new comprehensive dialog is displayed. This dialog is called the Client Modification dialog which allows you to edit individual elements of the client schedule.
FIGURE 23. Client Modification Dialog

The Client Modification dialog (Figure 23) contains a list of elements for the client schedule, a [New] button to add a new element, a [Save] button to save modifications to the element, and a section to modify fields of the client element. You can think of an element as an element of time. This holds true in most cases, unless you have very elaborate scheduling needs. Most commonly, the element-of-time is a day, but it could be an hour in more elaborate schedules.

The fields in the Client Modification dialog are:

· Title
The description of the client element, used on generated reports.
· Type
The backup type, Master, Incremental, Special, or ParaChute. Special is used to indicate a modified profile with non-standard options that have been entered by you. ParaChute is a special backup to support disaster recovery of Intel PC clients. See the chapter "BareMetal Disaster Recovery: Intel® Platforms" on page 263. The ParaChute type is only valid for Intel and compatible BP clients.
· Frequency
The frequency indicates how often the element is repeated. This could be daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.
· Element (time element)
Specifies the day of week or month or year depending on the frequency. This may not be editable if the frequency is not variable, such as for a daily repeated schedule. For example, if you are using the weekly frequency, it represents the day of the week. For a monthly frequency, it represents the day of the month.
· Enabled
You can disable the element from being executed by toggling this off. When disabled, the client schedule does not run when the frequency is due. It is also possible to disable the entire group from the Modify Schedule dialog.
· Use Next Slot?
If the schedule device is a jukebox, this field specifies if this client should make the jukebox use the tape from the next available slot. This is used to indicate when the schedule should move to the next tape in the jukebox.
· Verify After?
This allows you to specify any verification once the backup is completed. Level-1 verification ensures that the files do indeed exist on the tape and that header checksums are intact. Bit-Level verification compares the data on the tape against the data on the hard-drive bit by bit.
· Profile
The profile specifies the backup options to use for the schedule. You may change the profile for an individual client element with this option. This allows you to fine-tune the backup for a specific machine by specifying include and exclude files and any combination of over 30 options. The [Browse] button will allow you to select from a list of available profiles, and the [Edit] button will allow you to modify components of the profile source.
Backup Professional is shipped with default profiles for the supported operating systems. These profiles are the same as those created by other BP utilities such as the Backup utility, so you may also use profiles you have previously created. We suggest you use the Backup facility to design a profile to be run by the scheduler. After designing the profile, be sure to save it in the schedules area instead of the general area.
Note that the profile specifies a client and device, but in the case of a profile used with a schedule, these values are ignored. They are overwritten and schedule run-time with the actual client name and device as specified in the schedule. As you become familiar with Backup Professional schedules and profiles, you can create specialized profiles for your schedules.

5.3.4.4 Verifying A Schedule

To confirm that you have appropriately setup your schedule, run a schedule report after highlighting the schedule name under admin->setup->scheduler. The schedule report will show the schedule type, when a job is scheduled to run, if the job is enabled and the type of verification to be run for each client that is in the schedule. A sample schedule report is shown in Figure 24.
FIGURE 24. Schedule Report


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