Networker Backups

Networker performs backup in two ways:  Client-initiated or server-initiated.  Client-initiated are manual backup always, while server-initiated can be manually activated or by schedule.  Server-initiated also can be full, incremental, level 1-9 or synthetic full.

A client-initiated backup starts with the save process being called to backup up some data.  The can be through the CLI on the client using the "save" command or by the "winworkr.exe" GUI.  The save command authenticates the user and then simultaneously sends tracking data to the server as well as sends the save set to the storage node.  The storage node then sends tracking info to the server once it writes data to the volume.

A server-initiated backup starts with the server issuing a backup request to the client.  The client then invokes the save command which sends tracking data to the server as well as save data to the storage node.  The storage node sends tracking data to the server as it writes to the volume.  Once the backup is complete, the server sends tracking data to a Tracking Data Backup, as well as bootstrap info to be sent to a log and/or email.  It will also then send information to the savegrp completion log.  The tracking data backup is to ensure that backup data can be recovered in the event of a server failure.

Networker server is automatically a client resource in its own group to accommodate local backups.

Full backup happens by default on Sunday, incrementals happen every other day by default.

To initiate backup when adding a client to the Default Group, the Autostart parameter needs to be changed to "enabled."  When enabled, the default backup time is 3:33 AM.

Backups can be started manually from the Monitoring tab in the NMC.

When defining a client resource, set the Browse Policy to determine how long the client data can be browsed through the GUI (by keeping the data in the CFI database).  Set the Retention Policy to determine how long the data is kept on media, however, to restore from data outside the browse policy time frame requires that the administrator know the save set.

Time-based Group resources specify the start time of a backup, while Probe-based Group backup is an event-driven backup based on the result of a script.

Backup levels:

• Full - backup up all data
• Level 1-9 - backup all changed since most recent backup from a lower level
• Incremental - changed since last backup
• Skip - never back up
• Synthetic Full - no new data is transferred, but incrementals already on disk are merged with the last full.  
• Incremental Synthetic Full - An incremental backup is done, then all incrementals merged with last full

Ave Set Attribute defines what data should be saved, for which wildcards can be used.  The "All"attribute in the save set backs up all physical drives and some system files such as VSS data.

Checkpoint Restart will restart a failed backup from a known-good checkpoint.  It is recommended to use checkpoint granularity and not checkpoint by file, because the system resources become greatly taxed for each file when there are a large number of small files being backed up.  For checkpoint restart, the Networker server and client must all be running version 7.61 SP1 or newer.

If all clients and server are running version 7.5 or newer, the Backup Wizard can be used to generate teh client resource and backup groups and jobs.

Directives are options that can be set.  Server-side directives are known as global directives, while client-side directives are known as local.  You can also use Networker user local directives that are specific to a single user.

Directives use Application Specific Modules (ASM) such as aes for encryption, compressasm for software compression, logasm to skip warnings if files are changed during backup, rawasm to backup up raw partitions, swapasm to skip the swap file and more.