Administrator Guide

Guidelines for Backup Jobs
Follow these guidelines when working with backup jobs.
Replay Manager queues a maximum of ten jobs at a time. For this reason, do not submit more than ten
backup jobs (using a schedule, a script, or manually) at a time.
• If the queue reaches more than five jobs, warning events are logged in the Windows Event Log.
• If the queue reaches ten jobs, the excess jobs are discarded and an error status is posted to the
Windows Event Log indicating that the queue has stopped accepting jobs.
Replay Manager does not check the number of simultaneously scheduled jobs when creating or
modifying backup set schedules. To prevent a new schedule from causing more than 10 overlapping
jobs, use the Backup Job Queue and the Backup Schedule Run Time Report.
In addition, follow these guidelines when creating schedules for backup jobs:
• Although a backup snapshot completes in seconds, the entire backup snapshot process — from
temporarily freezing all application IO, taking the snapshot, and then releasing all application IO - can
take significant time to process depending on the applications in use. It can also take time to apply a
retention policy. For this reason, make sure that a scheduled backup can finish before another backup
is scheduled to start.
• For large volumes and components, Dell recommends scheduling backups during off hours.
• At present, Replay Manager does not support backups for Storage Center Live Volumes.
• At present, Replay Manager Services for VMware (RMSV) does not support the Front-End SAS
interface.
Related links
View Queued Items
Display the Backup Schedule Run Time Report
Backing Up a Boot Volume (LUN 0)
In some instances, backing up a boot volume may fail because the Virtual Shadow Copy Service (VSS)
cannot suspend all IO on the volume. Therefore, do not use Replay Manager to back up boot volumes.
To back up boot volumes, create a Storage Center Replay of the boot volume.
Guidelines for Scheduling and Expiring Replays
Replays allow a site to restore data from a specific point-in-time. When planning schedules and
expiration settings for Replays, take care to balance the point-in-time restore requirements with the
amount of resources consumed by unexpired Replays. That is, do not create Replay schedules and
expiration settings that allow unexpired Replays to consume a disproportionate amount of Storage
Center resources.
Extension-Specific Best Practices
Before using Replay Manager to create backup sets, schedule backups, and restore data, see the best
practice guidelines. These guidelines provide guidelines specific to each available Replay Manager backup
extension.
Related links
Backing Up Replay Manager Data
Installing and Configuring the Verification Service for Exchange
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