Planning for policies

Policy configuration is flexible enough to meet the various needs of all NAS backups in a NetBackup environment. To take advantage of this flexibility, take time to plan before starting to configure the policies in the Policies utility.

The following table outlines the steps to take to ensure that you get optimal results from your policy configurations.

Table: Steps for planning policies

Step	Action	Description
Step 1	Gather information about the NAS backups	Gather the following information about each NAS share or volume: The NFS share or volume name. The approximate size of each share or volume. Total size of the data that you want to backup. One share may contain a large amount of data while the other shares are smaller. To avoid long backup times, include the large share in one policy and the smaller ones in another policy. It may be beneficial to create more than one policy for the large share.
Step 2	Consider the storage requirements	For NAS policies you must use a Storage lifecycle policy as the storage. The storage unit and volume pool settings apply to everything that are backed up by a policy. If the files that you are backing up have special storage requirements, create separate policies for the files, even if other factors are the same, such as schedules.
Step 3	Consider the backup schedule	Create additional backup policies if the schedules in one policy do not accommodate all NAS backups. Consider the following factors when deciding to create additional policies: Best times for backups to occur? To back up different NAS shares or volumes on different schedules may require additional policies with different time schedules. For example, create different policies for night and day time backups. How frequently the shares/volumes change? If some share or volume changes more frequently than others, the difference may be enough to warrant creating another policy with a different backup frequency. This way you can backup the frequently occurring changes in the protected share or volume. How long backups need to be retained? Each schedule includes a retention setting that determines how long NetBackup keeps the shares or volumes that are backed up by the schedule. Because the schedule backs up all the shares/volumes in the backup selection list, all shares/volumes should have similar retention requirements. Do not include the shares/volumes whose full backups must be retained forever, together in a policy where full backups are retained for only four weeks.
Step 4	Evaluate backup times	Evaluate total backup times for each schedule and further subdivide policies to reduce backup times to an acceptable level. For example, if the backup of D:\User, D:\h001, and E:\h002\Projects on NAS share1 takes too much time, create a new policy for E:\h002\Projects.
Step 5	Select exactly what to back up.	You do not need to back up entire shares or volumes, unless required. Create include and exclude lists to select and back up only the required file(s). Configuring include and exclude lists

Planning for policies

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