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Administrator's Guide


Scheduling a Client Operation

To automate client operations, you can define new schedules. To later modify, copy, and delete these schedules, see Chapter 13, Managing Schedules for Client Nodes.

When you define a schedule, you assign it to a specific policy domain. You can define more than one schedule for each policy domain.

To set up a client schedule on the server, perform these steps:

  1. Define a schedule (DEFINE SCHEDULE command). ("Defining Client Schedules")
  2. Associate client nodes with the schedule (DEFINE ASSOCIATION command). (Associating Client Nodes with Schedules)
  3. Ensure that the clients start the client scheduler. (Starting the Scheduler on the Clients)
  4. Display the schedule information and check that the schedule completed successfully (QUERY SCHEDULE and QUERY EVENT commands). (Displaying Schedule Information)

The following sections describe how to automate a basic client operation, incremental backup.

Defining Client Schedules


Task Required Privilege Class
Define client schedules for any policy domain System or unrestricted policy
Define client schedules for specific policy domains System, unrestricted policy, or restricted policy for those domains

Key information to have when scheduling operations are:

To define a schedule for daily incremental backups, use the DEFINE SCHEDULE command. You must specify the policy domain to which the schedule belongs and the name of the schedule (the policy domain must already be defined). For example:

define schedule engpoldom daily_backup starttime=21:00 
duration=2 durunits=hours

This command results in the following:

To change the defaults, see the DEFINE SCHEDULE command in the Administrator's Reference.

Associating Client Nodes with Schedules


Task Required Privilege Class
Associate client nodes with schedules System, unrestricted policy, or restricted policy for the policy domain to which the schedule belongs

Client nodes process operations according to the schedules associated with the nodes. To associate client nodes with a schedule, use the DEFINE ASSOCIATION command. A client node can be associated with more than one schedule. However, a node must be assigned to the policy domain to which a schedule belongs.

After a client schedule is defined, you can associate client nodes with it by identifying the following information:

To associate the ENGNODE client node with the WEEKLY_BACKUP schedule, both of which belong to the ENGPOLDOM policy domain, enter:

define association engpoldom weekly_backup engnode

Starting the Scheduler on the Clients

The client scheduler must be started before work scheduled by the administrator can be initiated. Administrators must ensure that users start the Tivoli Storage Manager Scheduler on the client or application client directory, and that the scheduler is running at the schedule start time. After the client scheduler starts, it continues to run and initiates scheduled events until it is stopped.

The way that users start the Tivoli Storage Manager Scheduler varies, depending on the operating system that the machine is running. The user can choose to start the client scheduler automatically when the operating system is started, or can start it manually at any time. The user can also have the client acceptor manage the scheduler, starting the scheduler only when needed. For instructions on these tasks, see Backup-Archive Installation and User's Guide and the appropriate client user's guide.

Note:
Tivoli Storage Manager does not recognize changes that you made to the client options file while the scheduler is running. For Tivoli Storage Manager to use the new values immediately, you must stop the scheduler and restart it.

Displaying Schedule Information


Task Required Privilege Class
Display information about scheduled operations Any administrator

You can display information about schedules and whether the schedules ran successfully.

Displaying Schedule Details

When you request information about schedules, the server displays the following information:

The following output shows an example of a report that is displayed after you enter:

query schedule engpoldom
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Domain       * Schedule Name    Action Start Date/Time      Duration Period Day |
|------------ - ---------------- ------ -------------------- -------- ------ --- |
|ENGPOLDOM      MONTHLY_BACKUP   Inc Bk 07/21/1998 12:45:14      2 H    2 Mo Sat |
|ENGPOLDOM      WEEKLY_BACKUP    Inc Bk 07/21/1998 12:46:21      4 H    1 W  Sat |
|                                                                                |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Checking the Status of Scheduled Operations

For Tivoli Storage Manager, a schedule completes successfully as long as the command associated with the schedule is successfully issued. The success of the issued command is independent of the success of the schedule.


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