SLPs, Almost a

Beginners Guide

Scott Holowinski
Senior Backup Administrator
OneNeck IT Services

SLPs, Almost a Beginners Guide

Who

Am I
My Environment
What is a SLP
Creating SLPs
Deleting SLPs
Best Practices
Questions?

Who Am I
NetBackup

administrator for the

last 5 years
3+ years with current
environment
Began using SLPs in 2009 with
NBU 6.5.3

My Environment
Windows

Master Server
8 Windows Media Servers
900 Hosts
1700 Backup Policies
150 SLPs
15000 jobs a day
15-25TB of backups a day

What is a SLP
Storage

Lifecycle Policy

A plan or map of where backup data

will be stored and for how long.
Focuses management on individual
images
Very flexible when making multiple
copies and using multiple retentions

Creating a SLP
Article:

HOWTO34771
Administrators Guide 1, Chapter
14

Creating a SLP

Adding Storage Destinations

How My Data Flows

A Basic SLP

Hierarchical SLP

Give Me More SLP

Why

so many SLPs?

Retention
Backup destination
Duplicate destination(s)
Hurts

batching and SLP

processing takes longer

Removing a SLP
Remove

from all backup policies

All active jobs completed wait
or cancel
Cancel any pending duplications
nbstlutil cancel lifecycle <name>
Delete

SLP

May need to wait several minutes

after last job completes

Removing a SLP
click on desised SLP
Right-Click and select Delete and
confirm

Doing it CLI Style

NBSTL

add/modify
remove
list

Example of an add
nbstl TEST-PRD-UNX-STD -add -dp
70000 -uf 0,1,1 -residence
DSSU_UNX,DD-UNX,TAPE-TEST -pool
__NA__,__NA__,TEST-Offsite -source
0,0,0 -managed 2,0,0 -rl 0,4,1

Best Practices
TECH153154

7.1and later
NetBackup 7.1 Best Practice
Using Storage Lifecycle
Policies and Auto Image
Replication
TECH75047

7.0.1 or earlier
Best practices for configuring
NetBackup with Storage
Lifecycle Policies

Best Practices
Plan

for duplication time

Duplication may take as long as

original backup or longer
Duplication requires twice the
hardware (Reading and Writing)
NBRB gets hit twice as hard as
well

Best Practices
Introduce

SLPs into the

environment gradually
Dont switch everything to SLPs
at once
Do limit duplications initially
SLP duplications require
bandwidth and hardware
You may need to re-evaluate
hardware requirements

Best Practices
Be

conservative when using

storage unit groups with
Media Server Load Balancing
Negative impact on NBRB
Every queued job gets evaluated
More servers = slower resource
allocations

Best Practices
Be

conservative when using

storage unit groups with
Inline Copy
More load on NBRB
Evaluates possible server and space
every evaluation cycle for queued
jobs

Monitor closely when adding

servers or storage units

Best Practices
Use

Duplication Job Priority

to give backups priority over
duplications
or the inverse, depends on your
situation
Or just dont share resources if
possible

Best Practices
Avoid

increasing backlog

Oldest files get duplication jobs

first
Have to duplicate faster than
backups to catch up
the behinder you get the more you
get behind
Could be over 1 day, 3 days, a week,
you decide.

Best Practices
Backlog

Questions

How soon should duplications be

completed? SLAs?
How will you measure the
backlog?
What about downtime?
How will you recover from a
backlog?

My Backlog

Tuning Files
The

LIFECYCLE_PARAMETERS

file
/usr/openv/netbackup/db/config
-unix
netbackup\db\config\ -windows

Tuning Files

LIFECYCLE_PARAMETERS Values
MIN_GB_SIZE_PER_DUPLICATION_JOB 8
MAX_GB_SIZE_PER_DUPLICATION_JOB 25
MAX_MINUTES_TIL_FORCE_SMALL_DUPLICATI
ON_JOB 30
DUPLICATION_SESSION_INTERVAL_MINUTES 5
IMAGE_EXTENDED_RETRY_PERIOD_IN_HOURS
2
DUPLICATION_GROUP_CRITERIA 1
TAPE_RESOURCE_MULTIPLIER 2

Tuning Files
NBRB.conf

TECH57942
EMM.conf

TECH137761
server.conf

HOWTO34665 or HOWTO33625
May need to contact support for help
with these

Any questions?

scott.holowinski@oneneck.com