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Tivoli Storage Manager for Windows Backup-Archive Clients Installation and User's Guide

Full Incremental Backup

The first time you run a full incremental backups, Tivoli Storage Manager backs up all of the files and directories on the drives you specify. This process can take a long time if you have several files to back up. Successive full incremental backups will only back up new and changed files. This allows the backup server to maintain current versions of your workstation files, without having to waste time or space by backing up files that already exist in server storage. Depending on your storage management policies, the server may keep more than one version of your files in storage. The most recently backed up files are active backup versions. Older copies of your backed up files are inactive versions. However, if you delete a file from your workstation, the backup server will not maintain an active backup version of that file. If you need to retrieve a file you have deleted, you will need to access the backup server's inactive file versions. See Chapter 8, Understanding Storage Management Policies for more information about storage management polices.

To perform a full incremental backup using the client GUI, select the Incremental (complete) option from the type of backup pull-down menu on the backup window or use the incremental command on dsmc prompt. Specify file systems, directory trees, or individual files to include in the backup.

During an incremental backup, the client queries the server or the journal database (Windows NT, 2000) to determine the exact state of your files since last incremental backup. The client uses this information to:

Attention: If a file's modification timestamp changes, it will be backed up during the next full incremental backup. The directories in the path that contain the file are also backed up, unless they already exist on the server. A directory that already exists on the server is only backed up again if its permissions or time stamp change. Directories count in the number of objects backed up. To exclude directories from backup, use the exclude.dir option. For more about exclude.dir, see Exclude Options.

Understanding Which Files are Backed Up

When you requst a backup, Tivoli Storage Manager backs up a file if all of the follwing requirements are met:

Journal-Based Backup (Windows NT, 2000 only)

If you install the journal engine service and it is running, then by default the incremental command attempts to perform a journal-based incremental backup on any journaled file systems. Tivoli Storage Manager does not use the journaling facility inherent in Windows NTFS 5 file systems or any other journaled file system. In order for to successfully perform a journal-based backup, several conditions must be met. These include:

  1. The journal service must be set up to monitor the file space that contains the files and directories being backed up.
  2. A full incremental has to have been susccessfully run once on the drive being backed up.
  3. The file space image at the server cannot have been modified by an administrative command since the last full incremental
  4. The storage management policy for the files being backed up cannot have been updated since the last full incremental.

The journal engine service records changes to an object or its attributes in a journal database. During a journal-based backup, the client obtains a list of files that are eligible for backup from the journal database. Journal-based backup can increase backup performance because the client does not scan the local file system or contact the server to determine which files to process. Journal-based backup also reduces network traffic between the client and server.

The client filters the list based on the current include-exclude list and processes, expires, and updates the resulting files according to policy constraints, such as serialization. You can use the copy frequency attribute during a traditional full incremental backup. However, the client ignores this management class attribute during a journal-based backup.

The journal engine service does not record changes in specific system files, such as pagefile, registry, etc., in the journal. Therefore, journal-based backup will not back up these files. See the journal service configuration file tsmjbbd.ini in the client installation directory for excluded system files. See Appendix D, Journal Service Configuration for more information about the journal service configuration file tsmjbbd.ini.

To support journal-based backup, you must install the journaling engine service background process as a service on Windows NT and 2000 using the dsmcutil command or the client GUI setup wizard. See Appendix C, Using the Client Service Configuration Utility (Windows NT, 2000, XP, Windows.NET) for more information about using the dsmcutil command to install the journal engine service.

To install and configure this service using the client GUI setup wizard, perform the following steps:

  1. From the main window, open the Utilities menu and select Setup Wizard .
  2. Select the Help me configure the TSM Journal Engine checkbox.
  3. Follow the instructions on the screen to configure and use the journal engine.

See Incremental for more information about journal-based backup.

Notes:

  1. Journal-based backup is supported on a Version 4.2 or higher Tivoli Storage Manager server.

  2. When using anti-virus software, there are limitations to journal-based backup. Refer to the README file that is shipped on the product installation media for more information.

  3. Journal-based backup may not fall back to the traditional incremental backup if the policy domain of your node is changed on the server, depending on when the policy set within the domain was last updated and the date of the last incremental. In this case, you must force a full traditional incremental backup to rebind the files to the new domain. Use the nojournal option with the incremental command to specify that you want to perform a traditional full incremental backup, instead of the default journal-based backup.


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