Now that you have performed your initial manual backup you are ready to ensure that your machine is set up to run scheduled backups. By default, during the installation process of the TSM software, the scheduler service will be set up to perform overnight scheduled backups automatically.

1. Find out when your scheduled backup is due to run

Each college and department is allocated one night a week on which all its backup accounts have their schedule slots. All TSM accounts are given a 15-minute window on that night in which to run their weekly backup. In order to find out your college/department's backup schedule window, and your specific backup schedule time within that, do the following.

Please note, however, that our servers only work out your exact scheduled slot the night after you have registered your machine for backup, so please wait till the day after registering before checking. (If you happen to register on the day that your first scheduled backup is set to occur, therefore, your timeslot may be different from the next week onwards.)

  1. Go to the Self-Registration Page.
  2. Select the node you wish to view the schedule for and select View client information.
  3. The backup schedule will be among the information listed on screen. This will show you which day your backups are due to run, e.g. 
    Backup schedule: Wednesday
  4. All overnight backups run between 18:00 and 06:00. So in the above example, your machine might need to be left on on Wednesday night (for a backup between 18:00 and 23:59 Wednesday night) or on Tuesday night (for a backup between 00:00 and 06:00 Wednesday morning). To find out your node's specific backup time, click on the button marked View scheduled backups: you will then see a list of your recent and future backups, which will give the Scheduled Start time of your node's backups.

2. Ensure that you will only be backing up the data that you need to back up

By default TSM will back up all your data, except for those default files and folders excluded from backup that are set to be excluded by the HFS Team. Everything else on your machine, including locally attached external drives - which may be local backups of the machine itself - will be backed up on the schedule. It is a waste of resources to back up the same data twice over, or to back up other data that you do not want or need to send us, so please see our page on how to exclude files and folders from backup and configure TSM accordingly.

3. Ensure that your machine is switched on for scheduled backups to run

In order for scheduled backups to be successful, the machine must be on when the scheduled backup is due to run. For machines which are always left on, such as servers, this is not a problem; for environmental and/or practical reasons this may not be suitable for all desktop/laptop clients. OUCS offer a service called Wake-on-LAN which will switch your machine on when the TSM backup is due to start, and you can also set your machine to switch off afterwards. For more information please see our page on how to set a machine to switch on and off for scheduled backups.

Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion users need to change their sleep settings prior to running backups, see how to configure Mac OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) sleep settings for backup and restore.

N.B. The Wake on Lan service is not yet available in all departments and colleges: please speak to your local IT Officer for more information.

4. What if I miss my scheduled backup?

If your machine is not available to be backed up when it is scheduled to do so then you will receive an automatic email the day after it was due to run, advising you that a backup was MISSED. If you were not expecting this email or do not know why the scheduled backup was missed then follow the link in the email that will assist you with the troubleshooting process.

If you have missed a scheduled backup then you can always run a manual backup whenever you feel the need to do so. For instructions on how to do this, please see our manual backup pages for Windows, Macintosh and Linux. For how to back up on the command line, see using the TSM client command line interface.