Monitoring and Managing Group Backups

Use the Group Control window in the Backup administration program to monitor scheduled groups during a backup. The Group Control feature, savegroup completion message, bootstrap printout, and system console log provide information about the success of scheduled backups and the information you need to recover your data.

The Group Control feature provides status information and contains controls for previewing, stopping, and starting scheduled backup groups.

The status information about the most recently started backup group is displayed as one of the following:

• Running

• Never Run

• Finished

• Not Finished (indicates the backup has exited without finishing)

• Preview Run (indicates the test of the backup configuration)

Monitoring Operations

The Group Control Details feature available in the Backup administration program enables you to view more detailed information about a completed group backup. Use this feature to determine which client save sets were backed up successfully and which save sets failed.

The Group Control Details window displays the status of client save sets in the backup process in one of three message fields:

• Pending Save Sets - displays the client save sets that have not yet been backed up.

• Completed Save Sets - displays the client save sets that Backup has successfully backed up.

• Failed Save Sets - displays the client save sets that Backup did not back up (typically because of a machine or network crash).

You can use the Group Control Preview feature to simulate a backup for a specific group. This feature helps you identify potential problems before Backup runs an upcoming group backup. To preview a backup group with the Backup administration program, display the Group Control window and click the Preview button. To preview a backup group from the command line, become root on the Backup server, then issue the savegrp -p group-name command at the shell prompt.

Backup displays information about how a group will perform during its next scheduled backup, instead of displaying past information about completed group backups.

Immediate Start of a Scheduled Group Backup

When you start a scheduled backup group manually (on demand), Backup runs the backup at the level of the next scheduled backup, which can be full, level 1-9, or incremental.

To immediately start a group backup in one of two ways:

• In the Backup administration program, click the Start Now button in the Group Control window.

• From the command line, become root on the Backup server, then issue the savegrp group-name command at the shell prompt.

When you use the Start Now control, Backup overrides the Groups scheduled start time and immediately backs up the clients in the group.

Stop and Restart of a Scheduled Group Backup

After you initiate a Stop in the Group Control window, Backup completes its backup of the current save set, halts the rest of the scheduled backup, and displays Not Finished in the Status field in the Group Control window.

After you initiate a Restart through the Group Control window, Backup resumes the scheduled backup for the group and displays Running in the Status field.