savegrp

The savegrp program runs a group of Backup clients through the save process to back up filesystem data. The group of clients is selected by the name assigned (see "NSR group "). Typically, savegrp is invoked automatically, as specified by each group's NSR group resource.

If you do not specify a group name, the Backup group named Default is used. If you specify a group name, clients whose nsr_client resources specify the named group in their Group attribute are included. If you specify an explicit client list with the -c client-name option, the savegrp program only includes the named clients in the backup and ignores other members of the group.

If you enable the Clone attribute for the named group, the savegrp program automatically invokes a clone of the save sets backed up during the save session. The client save sets and their associated file indexes are cloned before the bootstrap save set is generated, which allows the bootstrap to track both the original save sets and their clones. The bootstrap save set is cloned as well. Cloned save sets are sent volumes assigned to the clone pool specified in the NSR group resource.

If a client's Save Set attribute specifies "All," the savegrp program requests a list of the filesystems to perform the save program on (this is called a probe). The probe expands "All" into a list by searching for local and automatically mounted filesystems on the client machine (NFS mount points and manually mounted filesystems are generally not included in the list gathered by the probe).

You cannot run more than one occurrence of the savegrp program on the same group at the same time; the program exits with an error message. If you run different groups at the same time, each group runs save program sessions up to the limit specified in the Parallelism attribute for the nsr_client resource (the default value for Parallelism is 4). However, the Backup server only allows save program sessions up to the limit specified in the server's Parallelism attribute to write to one backup device at a time. Each save set generates a separate save program session, regardless of the client it originates from.

When the save process (and, if enabled, clone process) is complete, a notification with an Event value of "savegrp" and a Priority value of "notice" is sent to the nsr_notification system. This is generally set up to send e-mail to the root user to indicate the success or failure of the backup, the clients backed up during the savegrp execution, and the data saved.

The following example describes the format and options available for the savegrp program:

savegrp [see "Options"] [-R | -G] [group-name]

Options:

[-EIOmnpv] [-l level | -C schedule]

[- e expiration] [- t date] [-r retries]

[-P printer] [-W width] [-c client [-c client...]]

• Use the -c client option to run savegrp on a specific client or clients. When you specify this option, only the named clients from the specified group-name are run.

• Use the -C schedule option to specify the name of the nsr_schedule resource to use for the automatic save level selection process.

• Use the -e expiration option to specify the date when the saved data is to expire. If you use the special value of "forever" for expiration, the volume the data resides on never expires. This is typically used for migration or archive volumes. By default, no explicit expiration date is assigned.

• Use the -E option to estimate the amount of data that is generated by each save set before the save operation is performed. This option results in a double traversal of the filesystems: once to generate an estimate and again to perform the actual save operation. The data itself is only read from the disk on the final pass, because the estimate is performed by accessing the anode information.

• Use the -G option to run only the group, without restart semantics.

• Use the -I option to disable the save operation performed on each client's file index.

• Use the -l level option to specify the level of the save.

• Use the -m option to disable monitor status reports, including all the nsr_notification actions.

• Use the -n option to cause save to perform an estimate as described for the -E option, but not to perform an actual save after it generates the estimate. The -m option is implied when you use the -n option.

• Use the -O option to only save each client's file index. For the server, this results in a save of the bootstrap as well. By default, the Backup server's bootstrap is backed up any time a group that it is a member of runs through a scheduled or manually invoked savegrp execution. The client file indexes and server bootstrap are a vital part of the disaster recovery procedure.

• Use the -p option to run the probe on each client. This provides information on the filesystems and level of save to perform on each client, without an actual save of the data. The -m option is implied when you use the -p option.

• Use the -P printer option to specify the printer that the savegrp program should send bootstrap information to upon completion of the backup.

• Use the -r retries option to specify the number of times the Backup server should retry failed clients before the savegrp program declares the client backup failed. The default value for this option is taken from the NSR group resource. Abandoned saves are not retried, because they may eventually be completed. A retry is not attempted if the -p option is specified.

• Use the -R option to use the information stored on the Backup server to restart a group that was previously terminated (generally, this is due to a crash of the Backup server during a backup).

• Use the -v option to run the savegrp program in verbose mode.

• Use the -W width option to format the savegrp output or notification messages. The default width is 80.