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The standard Gregorian calendar, which starts on the first day of January and is comprised of months that have a set number of days, is used as the basis for all scheduled operations, as well as data aging and auxiliary copies.
For organizations that use custom calendars for their fiscal year (i.e., a calendar that starts on a different day and month, and whose months have a unique number of days), standard calendars may pose a problem when operations must be scheduled according to the days of their custom calendar.
The Custom Calendar feature gives users the ability to create custom calendars so that their operations can be run within the boundaries of their own custom calculated time. A company may base their custom year on a calendar that starts in February, ends in January, and whose months have a unique number of days. This feature allows users to use the same custom calendar for their scheduled operations, and as the basis for copy data to storage policy copies, and for the aging of data from these copies.
Use the Control Panel from the Tools menu on the CommCell Console to create custom calendars.
Custom calendars can be used for weekly, monthly and yearly schedules. For example, a monthly schedule for a custom calendar that defines months that are 32 days long will run every 32 days, starting on the starting day of the month as defined in the calendar. Yearly schedules will run every n days (the number of days defined in the calendar), and will start on the day that is defined as the start of the custom calendar year.
Selective storage policy copies associated with custom calendars will have data copied during auxiliary copy operations either monthly, quarterly, half yearly, or yearly based on the days defined in the calendar. If a storage policy copy is re-associated with a different calendar, the auxiliary copy operation re-calculates the dates in which data is copied based on the time definitions set in the custom calendar.
A data aging operation that ages data from a storage policy copy with the Extended Retention option enabled will age data according to the time definitions set in the custom calendar, if that copy is using a custom calendar.
For example, let's assume that you want to preserve the tapes containing the
last full and incremental backups copied during monthly periods that end on the
last Friday of the month. In order to do this, you must define a custom calendar
to make the last Friday of the month signify last day of the month, and you must
select the Last Full Backup of Time Period option from the associated
storage policy copy's properties
Retention dialog. When selected, the last full backup of each extended
retention rule will be retained, providing there are no remaining full backup
scheduled for the same subclient during that time period. To define the custom
calendar to make the last Friday of the month signify last day of the month, see
Create a
Custom Calendar. In this case, the defined calendar would resemble the
following:
Month | Days | Start Date |
January 2009 | 30 | January 1 |
February 2009 | 28 | January 31 |
March 2009 | 28 | February 1 |
April 2009 | 28 | March 28 |
May 2009 | 35 | April 25 |
June 2009 | 28 | May 30 |
July 2009 | 35 | June 27 |
August 2009 | 28 | August 1 |
September 2009 | 28 | August 29 |
October 2009 | 35 | September 26 |
November 2009 | 28 | October 31 |
December 2009 | 28 | November 28 |
The following section provides the steps for using Custom Calendars.
Custom calendars are not supported in Express versions of the software. |
Operations performed with this feature are recorded in the Audit Trail. See Audit Trail for more information.
One year from the date in which a custom calendar definition is missing from a custom calendar, a Major event is generated in the Event Viewer every 24 hours.
Consider the following when creating custom calendars:
The CommCell Configuration report identifies the schedules and/or storage policy copies that are using custom calendars.
Job Schedule-List and Job Schedule-Interval reportsThe Job Schedule reports identify the schedules that are using custom calendars.
Storage Policy ReportThe Storage Policy report identifies the storage policy copies that are using custom calendars.