Skipped backups

Beginning with Windows Agent 8.90, Linux Agent 8.90, AIX Agent 9.00 and vSphere Recovery Agent (VRA) 9.11, when an agent is backing up data to a version 8.60 or later vault, you can schedule the backup job to run multiple times per day by creating an intra-daily schedule. See Schedule a backup to run multiple times per day.

To reduce schedule overloads when a backup job runs multiple times per day, backups are skipped when:

• An agent starts a backup that is scheduled by an intra-daily schedule, and a backup is already running for the job.

  Note: Windows Agent 8.72 and vSphere Recovery Agent 8.87 or later also skip a backup if it is scheduled to run multiple times per day by a custom schedule and a backup is already running for the job.

• An agent contacts a version 8.60 or later vault to start a backup that is scheduled by an intra-daily schedule, and the vault is busy with high-priority maintenance for the job data.

Backups are not skipped if they are scheduled to run daily or less often, or are ad hoc (not scheduled). In these cases, if a backup is already running for the job, the new backup is queued and starts when the current backup is finished. If the vault is busy with high-priority maintenance for the job data, the new backup is delayed for five minutes. After this delay, the backup starts and interrupts any maintenance that is running for the job data.

If email notifications are configured centrally in a Portal instance, Admin users can receive an email when a backup is skipped. See Set up email notifications for backups on multiple computers. When the last backup status reported for a job was "Skipped", this Last Backup Status appears for the job on the Computers page and Monitor page. See View computer and job status information and View, export and email backup statuses on the Monitor page. The Daily Status report also shows skipped backups. See Schedule the Daily Status Report.

In some Portal instances, users can also see skipped rates and 48-hour backup status histories for jobs. See View skipped rates and backup status histories.

Best practices: Reducing the number of skipped backups

If you notice that some backups are skipped frequently, you can make changes to the backup job, backup schedule, or servers to ensure reliable backups. For example, you could:

• Reduce the frequency of the scheduled backups.

• Reduce the size of the job. For a vSphere job, you can reduce the number of VMs in the job.

• On a Windows server, change from a Local System job to an Image job.

• In a vSphere environment, distribute your VMs across multiple datastores instead of using a single datastore.

• Add system resources (e.g., RAM, CPU, Storage IO) on the server where the agent is running. While the resources on a server might be sufficient for backing up and restoring data periodically, the resources might not be sufficient to run backups multiple times per day.

• Add system resources to the vault server.