Can More Than One Portable ("Full") Backup Job Run Simultaneously?

  • 7021000
  • 21-Jun-2017
  • 21-Jun-2017

Environment

Reload (all versions)

Situation

For one customer with 12 post offices, the last Portable (full) backup job was not completing until Wednesday.  The Portable backup jobs were configured to start early Saturday morning.

Resolution

While the Standard (incremental) daily backups can be configured to run jobs concurrently, that does not hold true for the Portable jobs.  Only one Portable job can run at a time and there is currently no configuration option to change that.  In addition, Standard daily backup jobs take precedence over portables; thus, if a portable job is in the queue waiting to be initiated and a scheduled Standard job is sent to the queue, the Standard job will be started before the Portable.

The Portable job cannot be run simultaneously with any other backup jobs, so it must wait in the queue until the Standard job is done; thus, you can see how a Portable can continue waiting in the queue if scheduled Standard backup jobs keep hitting the queue before it gets a chance to run.

This also applies to Tape Backup (TAR) jobs.  Their queuing is handled the same as a Portable backup job.

Typically, Standard backup jobs are a priority to most organizations over the Portable jobs; however, if you want to have your portable jobs run on schedule, disable the setting, Run Queued Standard Backup Jobs First.  This is found in the Reload administration console: SYSTEM | JOB | PREFERENCE.  It is a toggle setting. Pressing ENTER when it is "enabled" will disable it and vice versa.

For suggestions on how to speed up your portable jobs, refer to KB article entitled, "How to Speed Up Portable (Full) Backup Jobs".

Additional Information

This article was originally published in the GWAVA knowledgebase as article ID 2129.