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Plans, storage policies and Auxiliary copies

  • September 25, 2024
  • 8 replies
  • 367 views

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Hi all, hopefully someone can help with this.
We’re long time users of Commvault and very familiar with storage policies, schedule policies and the like. We’ve recently migrated our VMware estate to a new vCenter and have taken the opportunity to also migrate to using Plans at the same time. I’ve got a number of plans based on the times I want the backups to happen and the storage it’s going to (our retention is the same on all of them). So this has meant that I now have a large number of storage policies and I feel like the Aux copies are not really running efficiently because there’s so many of them (they are all trying to use the same resources, lots of errors about being unable to set up the copy pipeline that I wasn’t getting before). Backup hardware hasn’t changed whatsoever and the primary copies are working fine so I don’t feel this is to do with the new equipment as the issues are all contained within the existing setup (MAs, storage). Previously we had 2 storage policies covering everything so only 2 aux copy jobs running. I don’t want to break the plans but I can’t see what to do to make these work better and am considering going back to the old storage policy/schedule policy method as I have more granular control. Has anyone got any advice for me?

8 replies

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  • Vaulter
  • 86 replies
  • September 26, 2024

Hi @Lucy.

 

First, we would like to review the auxcopy job log to understand why it throws an error as “Uable to set up the copy pipeline”.

 

Please raise a case with the support to investigate this issue further.

 

Regards,

Wasim


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  • Byte
  • 45 replies
  • September 26, 2024

Lucy,
  Sounds like you are confirming my fears.  We are also long time customers using Storage and Schedule Policies.   It all makes perfect sense and works great right now.  I am worried as we are forced to Plans.  just like we are being forced to the inferior Command Center.   
   I am looking forward to hearing about your adventure with Plans and Aux copies.   Please update the thread as things progress.   Good luck! 


Erase4ndReuseMedia
Byte
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Farmer92 wrote:

Lucy,
  Sounds like you are confirming my fears.  We are also long time customers using Storage and Schedule Policies.   It all makes perfect sense and works great right now.  I am worried as we are forced to Plans.  just like we are being forced to the inferior Command Center.   
   I am looking forward to hearing about your adventure with Plans and Aux copies.   Please update the thread as things progress.   Good luck! 

Talk to your Account Manager and let them know you’re unhappy with the direction. 


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  • Vaulter
  • 86 replies
  • September 27, 2024

Hi @Lucy,

“Unable to set up the copy pipeline” is related to the network error.

If possible, please share the problematic auxcopy job ID.

In line with that time stamp, share the Jobmanager log from CS, and from the MA’s “CVJobreplicatorODS, CVD, CVFWD” logs.

 

Regards,

Wasim
 


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  • Byte
  • 58 replies
  • September 27, 2024

Hello @Lucy,

 

Plans are meant to consolidate your view on protection (combine scheduling with copies of protected data and rpo/sla/etc). From your initial remark it seems you created a lot of plans to achieve your old scheduling style. Now I am not saying this is wrong, but you might have missed the intent of plans.

 

Every plan creates storage poiicies and schedule policies on the back which come with aux copies, backup copies etc. These are setup with high concurrency defaults. So if you created 12 plans to achieve your scheduling Commvault will also kick off 12 aux copies every 30 minutes with high streams to copy those jobs.

 

I guess I want to say review your plans and if the amount is needed and you can maybe consolidate a bit?

 

In a future state the java gui, and therefor access to storage policies/schedule policies, will not be there anymore. This means you now have the unique oppurtunity to review your setup and make it better and provide feedback to Commvault. Adoption of plans has been slow and it might be they missed a few scenarios…

 

my 0.02


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  • Author
  • Byte
  • 8 replies
  • September 30, 2024

Sorry all I have been away a few days.

@mikevg I probably have missed the intent of plans if what I’m ending up with is wrong but I don’t understand how else to configure them without the jobs just popping off whenever they please. I suppose we’ll have to pay for some PS to show us what we’re doing wrong. I’m really concerned about moving my SQL server jobs over to plans and getting that right.

@Wasim I will raise a ticket with our supplier when I get a chance.

It would be good if there were some masterclass videos about the proper way to configure the plans, the youtube channel used to have some good stuff when there was a separate part for how tos/education but a lot of it is difficult to find now the separate channel is no longer in use. thanks for the advice all.


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Onno van den Berg
Commvault Certified Expert
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I would advice to play around with it to get more familiar and preferably do it based on the latest release. Nowadays it allows you to configure fixed start times and also offer more tweaking and tuning if this is something that you need. We moved over from a strategy that was based on fixed start times to a more dynamic way of scheduling thereby fully relying on a configuration based on RPO and for finetuning we use blackout windows. 


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