Flow

General execution flow for a backup plan:

1. Check if the system allows Backups to run - see Configurable Parameters and Settings to learn how to enable or disable all backups
2. Check if the current system time is within the maintenance window timeframe that was defined for the plan
3. Check if the backup store destination path is a mounted, remote, filesystem
4. Check if there is enough space in the destination path for downloading and storing the backup - see Configurable Parameters and Settings to learn how to determine this check's threshold value
5. Go over all the activities defined for the plan, and split them into executable tasks.
   For example, the plan have two activities, one to Secure Backup devices QA* and a second to export domain DOMAIN* on device TEST8 and on an unavailable device - TEST9,
   Six tasks will be created:
   a. Secure Backup task for device QA1
   b. Secure Backup task for device QA2
   c. Secure Backup task for device QA3
   d. Export Domain task for Device TEST8 and Domain DOMAIN1
   e. Export Domain task for Device TEST8 and Domain DOMAIN2
   f.  Since the device TEST9 is unavailable - an Export Domain task for Device TEST9 and domain DOMAIN* will be created with a "Skipped" status 
6. If all the created tasks are in "Skipped" state (because the devices are not available, or because no devices or domains matched the input patterns) - the plan will stop
7. If there are any tasks waiting to be executed - the Pre-Plan Script will be executed (if requested in the plan settings)
   
   the plan will stop if the script's return code is larger than 0

The tasks will start to execute in the order they were created, which corresponds to the order which the activities were defined.

General execution flow for a backup task:

1. Check if the current system time is within the maintenance window timeframe that was defined for the plan
2. Check if there is enough space in the destination path for downloading and storing the files - see Configurable Parameters and Settings to lean how to determine the check threshold value
3. If the backup is for a specific domain and quiesce was requested - check that the domain is not already quiesced
   if the backup is for an entire device and quiesce was requested - check that there are no quiesced domains in the device
4. In Export Domain was requested - checked that there are no unsaved changes in the requested domain(s),
   If there are any unsaved changes, two export domain backups will be taken - one for the persisted data and one for the unpersisted data.
5. If Secure Backup was requested - check that there is enough space in the DataPower appliance to store the backup before downloading it to the user storage - see Configurable Parameters and Settings to learn how to determine this check's threshold value
6.  Run the user's pre-script (if requested in the activity), the task will stop if the script return value was larger than 0
7.  Issue a Quiesce domain/device SOMA (if requested in the activity) 
8. Wait for the device or domain to finish quiescing. you can specify a timeout parameter for the Quiesce SOMA (see Configurable Parameters and Settings), DPOD will cancel the task if the domains are not yet quiesced 3 minutes after the specified timeout and will issue an Unquiesce SOMA
9. Perform the Secure Backup or Export Domain operation
10. Unquiesce the device/domain (if it was previously quiesced by this task) 
11. Wait for the device/domain to unquiesce,  you can specify a timeout value, 3 minutes after the timeout, DPOD will stop waiting for the unquiesce operation and will fail the task (the device's unquiesce operation will not be interrupted though)
12. Run the user's post-task script (if requested in the activity) 

After all the plan's tasks finished to execute - the post-plan script will be executed (if requested in the plan settings)