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A successful "bare-metal" restore of your Microsoft Windows operating systems begins with a successful backup. Follow these best practices to help ensure successful backup of your Microsoft Windows operating systems:
- Ensure that your Microsoft Windows operating system maintenance is up to date.
- Ensure that your IBM Spectrum Protect backup-archive client software is current. Earlier client versions might contain known defects that prevent a successful backup.
- Use the Open File Support feature for backup of local file systems. Open File Support uses Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to create snapshots of local file systems. The client backs up the system state and local file system data from the snapshots. Open File Support allows the client to back up in-use files and ensures "crash-consistent" backup of the system. Add the snapshotproviderfs vss option to your client options file (dsm.opt) to enable Open File Support. If you do not use the client acceptor to manage the client scheduler service, you must restart the scheduler service to enact the change to the client options file.
- Do not exclude files unless you are certain that they are not needed for restore operations. It is better to back up too much data, rather than too little.
- Do not use the example file exclusion list in the sample options file (dsm.smp) or the "recommended" file exclusion list in the client setup wizard. (These lists are under review, and this guidance is subject to change at the discretion of IBM.)
- Do not exclude files merely because they are in use, and thus skipped, during the backup; Open File Support addresses this concern.
- Do not exclude ntuser.* or usrclass.* files. These represent profile data for the system user accounts. If the profile data is not backed up, then it cannot be restored.
- In general, limit exclusions to user or application data that your business does not need to restore. Modern Microsoft Windows operations generally provide accurate information to the backup-archive client as to which system files to back up or exclude.
- If your system has other VSS providers besides the Microsoft Windows system provider, you might have to use the system provider for system state and file backup operations. To use the system provider, add the vssusesystemprovider yes option to your client options file (dsm.opt). If you do not use the client acceptor to manage the client scheduler service, you must restart the scheduler service to enact the change to the client options file.
- Do not set the client option testflags skipvssasr. The skipvssasr test flag does exactly as its name implies: it skips the processing of ASR data that is necessary for successful recovery. Therefore, do not use that setting.
- Configure backup operations to support first failure data capture (FFDC):
- Use the IBM Spectrum Protect backup-archive client scheduler for backup operations. The scheduler logs time-stamped messages to the scheduler log file (dsmsched.log).
- Do not use the backup-archive client quiet option. This option reduces the amount of backup log data, but suppresses information that might be required to identify problems and performance bottlenecks. If you must use the quiet option in your day-to-day operations, when you suspect a problem, remove that option temporarily to obtain data for troubleshooting.
- To mitigate large log sizes, add the errorlogretention and schedlogretention settings to the client options file (dsm.opt) to keep log data for a minimum of 30 days. If you do not use the client acceptor to manage the client scheduler service, you must restart the scheduler service to enact the changes to the client options file.
- Do not exclude the client log files or client options file from backup operations. These files are helpful for problem diagnosis.
- Aim for a backup return code of 0. "Successful" backup operations can end with return codes 0, 4, or 8.
- Return code 0: The backup operation finished with no skipped files, no warning messages, and no error conditions.
- Return code 4: The backup operation finished with one or more skipped files. No warning or error messages were logged.
- Return code 8: The backup operation finished with at least one warning message. It is also possible that some files were skipped. No error messages were logged.
- Return code 12: The backup operation failed due to an error. It is also possible that some files were skipped and some warning messages were logged.
- If the backup return code is nonzero, check the dsmerror.log and dsmsched.log for skipped files, warning messages, error messages, and other anomalous messages. Correct these issues as soon as possible.
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Document Information
Modified date:
24 March 2020
UID
ibm16042628