Selecting the optimal client backup method
You can use several techniques with the backup-archive client to help you ensure the best performance during various types of backup processing.
About this task
For most situations, incremental backup is the most comprehensive backup method to use. It is the best method for detecting file changes in your local system, and provides the capability to run individual file restores.
- The amount of available memory
- The backup window duration
Incremental backups can be memory intensive because the memory for an incremental backup holds the list of files that are known to the Tivoli® Storage Manager server. Therefore, the memory that is required for an incremental backup is proportional to the number of files in the file system that are being backed up. If the system does not have enough memory, the incremental backups can fail. The time that it takes the client to scan the file system and the amount of changed data can also contribute to backup processing that does not complete within the scheduled backup window. Memory-efficient and journal-based backups do not maintain the whole file list in memory.
Use the following general guidelines to resolve memory and backup window issues.
| Guideline | More information |
|---|---|
| 1. Resolve any memory issues first. You must resolve memory issues before you can resolve a backup window issue. For example, you can use the memoryefficientbackup yes or memoryefficient diskcachemethod options to reduce the memory requirements for backing up file systems that contain millions of files. | See Reduce client memory use |
| 2. Resolve any backup window issues. For example, if the number of files that change daily is relatively small, you can use journal-based backup. | See Tuning journal-based backups |
| 3. If you cannot otherwise resolve memory issues, consider using image backups. | See Image backup |