HP Software File Migration Agent Installation and Administration Guide (September 2009)

78 | Best Practices
Schedule FMA jobs
• To schedule FMA jobs, use the Scheduled Task Wizard in the Windows Control Panel (Start →
Control Panel
→ Planned/Scheduled Tasks) for scheduling the FMA job.
• Or, you can use the following command-line tools for scheduling an FMA job.
In this example, the FMA job starts every Sunday (Su) at 03:00 a.m.
schtasks /create /ST 03:00 /D Su /TN "C:\Progr..\MyJob.cmd"
Note For further information about the AT or SCHTasks command-line utility, see the documentation for
Microsoft Windows.
Backup/restore concept for FMA managed volumes
FMA is a hierarchical storage management (HSM) solution and, therefore, not a replacement for data
backup. The major purpose for backup is to ensure recovery of data on the server if a disaster occurs. The
main goal of HSM is to better manage data storage costs.
FMA migrates files to other forms of storage and creates copies of files, but does not back up files on the
server. When FMA releases files, only stubs are left on the managed file system, which point FMA to the
exact location in the backend storage, enabling file retrieval and user access.
To provide data protection, third-party backup applications are absolutely essential for disaster recovery.
The qualified third-party backup applications are HSM-aware, which means that stubfiles are backed up
without causing recalls from backend storage. Because FMA stubfiles are created as Windows sparse files, a
further requirement for backup applications is the appropriate processing of sparse files to avoid heavy
network traffic and to minimize the backup window.
Concepts for organizing the back up of FMA managed volumes:
• Protect all data on the server—To accomplish this, the backup process needs to be set up to the
incremental forever mode and the release of FMA jobs needs to be scheduled after the backup process
to ensure that files are backed up before becoming a stubfile. In this case it is most likely that the
capacity of the saved data exceeds the capacity of the original locations on the managed volumes.
Therefore, release operations trigger during a disaster recovery or massive restore of saved data. HP
recommends adjusting the monitoring time interval (for example, 10 minutes) and watermarks
accordingly.
• Speedy backup/restore processing—In this scenario, data backup needs to be configured to periodically
run full backups with subsequent incremental backups. This approach reduces the backup data volume
and backup/restore time period compared to a non-HSM managed filesystem with the same data
capacity and number of files.
CAUTION: When backing up stubfiles, it is very important that FMA’s cleanup expiration time must be set
equal to the expiration time that is configured for the backed up files. The FMA cleanup function removes
the archive copies of deleted files depending on the specified cleanup expiration time. In this context, the
expiration time, which is specified for the backend storage, also needs to be configured appropriately.
FMA does not support multiple references to one archive file copy. Only one stubfile can be linked to one
archive copy. As a result of this restriction, restore operations of files to an alternate location are not
permitted by FMA. Backed up files from FMA managed volumes can only be restored to their original
location.