Setting the preprocess interval for auto-discovery

The preprocess interval applies only to auto-discovery mode and specifies how often preprocessing occurs. When a schedule is due and NetBackup uses auto-discovery, NetBackup checks whether the previous preprocessing session occurred within the preprocess interval.

NetBackup performs one of the following actions:

If the preprocessing session occurs within the preprocess interval, NetBackup does not run preprocessing on the client.
If the preprocessing session did not occur within the preprocess interval, NetBackup preprocesses the client and makes required changes to the streams.

If necessary, you can change the interval by using the bpconfig command. The default is four hours and is a good value for most of the sites that run daily backups.

If the interval is too long or too short, the following can occur:

An interval that is too long can cause missed backups because new streams are not added early enough. For example, assume that the preprocess interval is set to four hours and a schedule has a frequency of less than four hours. A new stream can be omitted from the next backup because the preprocessing interval has not expired when the backup is due.
An interval that is too short can cause preprocessing to occur often enough to increase scheduling time to an unacceptable level. A short interval is most likely to be a problem when the server must contact a large number of clients for preprocessing.

The form of the bpconfig command to use for changing the interval is as follows:

install_path\NetBackup\bin\admincmd\bpconfig [-prep hours]

For example:

install_path\NetBackup\bin\admincmd\bpconfig -prep 12

You can set the preprocess interval for immediate preprocessing by specifying -prep 0. (Preprocessing occurs before every backup.) Specifying -prep -1 sets the preprocess interval to the default value of four hours.

The following example sets the preprocess interval to 12 hours.

You can determine the current interval by using the bpconfig command with the -L option:

bpconfig -L

Command output:

Mail Admin:			 *NULL*
Job Retry Delay:		10 minutes
Max Jobs/Client:		10
Backup Tries:		 2 in 12 hours
Keep Logs:			3 days
Max drives/master:	0
Compress DB Files:	older than 10 days
Media Mnt Timeout:	0 minutes (unlimited)
Display Reports:		24 hours ago
Keep TIR Info:		1 days
Prep Interval:		12 hours
Max Backup Copies:	2 
DB Clean Interval:	12 hours
Policy Update Interval: 10 minutes

For more information on the bpconfig command, see NetBackup Commands.