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NetBackup™ NAS Administrator's Guide

Last Published: 2025-08-12

Product(s): NetBackup (11.0.0.1)

Configuring include and exclude lists

With D-NAS backups, you can create include and exclude lists of the directories and the files that you want to protect in the client. NetBackup uses the include or exclude lists to skip or include files and directories during backups.

These lists are verified against the backup selections that you made for the client.

The exclude list indicates the files and directories to exclude from a backup.

The include list specifies the exceptions to the exclude list. This list indicates the excluded files that you want to back up from the client. You can use the include list when you want to backup only a few files from a large number of excluded files in a directory. Use the include list to add back the files that you eliminate with the exclude list.

Both the exclude and include lists must be configured on all backup hosts inside the backup host pool that you use for the D-NAS policy.

For syntax guidelines for the lists and more information, see Exclude list properties under the section Configuring hosts in the NetBackup Web UI Administrator's Guide.

Note the following:

To exclude any folder, use the format: \vol_name\dir. Do not use a slash at the end of the path for the directory.
To backup only the "dir" folder inside "\vol". In the exclude lists section add the path = \vol\*
In the include list, to create the exception to the exclude list, add path =
\vol\dir [Do not add a slash at the end]
\vol\dir\*
This configuration backs up only the data of the \vol\dir folder. Note that if you add only one rule of the two to the include list, the rule does not work and everything on \vol\dir are excluded. You must add both rules to the include list.

Examples for NFS:

Suppose that we have six directories from d1 to d6 inside volume1.

/volume1/d1 

/volume1/d2 

/volume1/d3 

/volume1/d4 

/volume1/d5 

/volume1/d6

Here is the exclude list:

/volume1/*

Here is the include list:

/volume1/d1

/volume1/d1/*

After successful back up the following directories are skipped from backup.

/volume1/d2 

/volume1/d3 

/volume1/d4 

/volume1/d5 

/volume1/d6

Only /volume1/d1 is backed up successfully.

Examples for SMB:

Consider the directory structure:

\volume\d1\file1 

\volume\d2\folder1\file1 

\volume\d2\folder2\file2 

\volume\d2\folder2\file3 

\volume\d3\folder3\file3 

\volume\d3\folder3\file2

Here is the exclude list:

file1 

\volume\d2\folder2\file2 

file3

Here is the include list:

\volume\d1\file1 

\volume\d3\folder3\file3

After successful backup, the following directories are skipped from the backup:

\volume\d2\folder1\file1 

\volume\d2\folder2\file2 

\volume\d2\folder2\file3 

\volume\d3\folder3\file2

These are the directories that are backed up:

\volume\d1\file1 

\volume\d3\folder3\file3