Using CA ARCserve D2D › Perform a Backup › Backup Considerations › Merge Job Guidelines

Merge Job Guidelines

Review the following merge job guidelines:

• A merge job has the lowest priority. When a merge job is running, if any other job comes in, the merge job will be stopped. After that job completes, the merge will be resumed/restarted.
• You can manually stop/pause the merge job when it is running. If the merge job is manually stopped/paused, you must manually start/resume it from the CA ARCserve D2D home page. It will not be resumed/restarted automatically. As a result, the launching of all scheduled merge jobs will be suspended until you manually resume them.
• If the merge job is automatically stopped it will be automatically started when no other job is running.
• When a merge job is resumed, CA ARCserve D2D will know exactly where to start the process. If the merge job crashed or the machine was abruptly shut down, the job is resumed from the previous merge state.

  Example 1: When a merge job is started and crashed at 20%, the next time when the job is restarted, it will start to merge sessions again from 0%.

  Example 2: When a merge job is started and paused at 10%, the next time when the job is restarted, it will start to merge sessions from the 10% point. If it crashes at 20%, then the merge job will be restarted from the 10% point.

• When a merge job is resumed/restarted, if the list of sessions being merged is not changed since the time it was paused, the merge is resumed. This means it resumes and continues the merge from the point where it was paused.
• When a merge job is resumed/restarted, if the list of sessions being merged is changed since the time it was paused, the original merge is resumed without any added/modified sessions. This means the original merge resumes and continues the merge from the point where it was paused. When the original merge is completed, a new merge of the added/modified sessions will then be performed.

  Example: The original merge job contains 4 backup sessions and is paused when it completes 90% of the merge. When the merge is resumed, CA ARCserve D2D will complete the remaining 10% of the original merge and then a new merge will be performed for the added/modified sessions.

• The CA ARCserve D2D home page Job Monitor indicates the merge job status. It shows the percentage complete and displays more details if needed. For more information, see Job Monitor Panel.
• If there are multiple sessions to be merged, they will be merged at once. The time spent for merging 10 sessions may be very close to the time spent for merging a single session.

  Example: If the merge job is stopped while merging session 1,2 and after some time when the merge job is resumed, it detects that session 3,4 should be merged as well. The merge job will merge 1,2,3,4 from the very beginning and the original merge process of 1,2 will be discarded.

  Example: Set the retention count to 7. You have 10 recovery points (from session 1-10, 1 is the full backup and 2-9 are incremental backups). If the merge job starts, session 1,2,3 should be purged and session 4 will be the full session after the merge.

• The merge process must be able to keep the recovery point in a consistent state. You can restore a file from any visible session even if the session is partially merged. If there is a session merge not completed, the merge job will run in the background to merge the session.