If you have an especially large number of client machines, consider creating several groups with different start times to help reduce network traffic. For example, you could start the backup time of the group that includes the engineering department's machines at four o'clock in the morning, and the group with all other clients on the network at midnight.
If you create different groups, be sure to stagger their start times to avoid overloading the server. Schedule them far enough apart so that one group has completed its backup before the next group starts. Backup does not start a new group's backup until all the groups with earlier start times are finished. See "Example: Scheduling Large Client Filesystems" on page 41.

How to Create a Customized Group

Backup provides several preconfigured groups for you to use. If you need a different
group configuration, you can create new groups to fit your situation. To create and
use a customized group, follow these steps:
1.Create the group in the Groups resource.
2.Edit an existing pool or create a new pool in the Pools resource. Select the new
group in the Groups attribute.
3.In the Clients resource, edit or create the client resources for the client machines
that contain the save sets you want to include in the group. Select the new group
in the Groups attribute.

Caution - Do not include spaces in a group name.

How Backup Uses Backup Groups

The client save sets in each Backup group begin their automatic scheduled backups according to the start time of the group. You can balance the backup loads by taking the client's backup schedule into account when you decide which clients to include in a specific group. (Refer to "Schedule Configuration" on page 37 for more information about creating schedules that vary the days that different clients perform full backups.)

Chapter 3

Server and Storage Node Operations

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