Backup Exec 2012 R2 - Library - Takes more than one tape
Hi all,
I am looking for some guidance/help.
We recently installed a Library to replace a Tape drive. Now our jobs takes two tapes instead of one.
Scenario:
HP Library 2024 - Backup Exec 2012 R2 up-to-date - Windows Server 2008 R2.
5 jobs (one per server) scheduled to be run one after another with no overlap (5 min gap between jobs aprox).
Schedule is set to run every day of the week.
First job set to "Overwrite media" and the other four jobs set to "Append to media, overwrite".
Here's what I think BE does:
- First job starts, it takes the oldest tape ("Allocated Date"), move it to the drive, overwrites it, run the job and then moves it back to the slot. "Allocated Date" is updated because tape was overwritten.
- Second job starts, instead of taking the previous tape it takes the oldest tape ("Allocated Date"), move it to the drive, append the data and moves it back to the slot. "Allocated Date" is not updated.
- Third job start, takes the previos tape (as its "Allocated Date" has not changed), move it to the drive, append the data and moves it back to the slot.
- Fourth and Fifth jobs do the same.
How can we force BE to take only one tape (the first one that was overwritten)?
Thank you in advance.
5 jobs (one per server) scheduled to be run one after another with no overlap (5 min gap between jobs aprox).
BE 2012 wasn't the best version, especially for job queueing. If they are are scheduled at the same time, you need a start gap between the jobs so that the second job knows that there is appendable media going to be available. If you shotgun start everything, there is likely to be no appendable media at the shotgun start.
BE 15 does a much better job of managing stuff like this, if you can do a software upgrade at some point.
Normally, BE waits for 60 seconds to see if another job wishes to use the same tape, to avoid the time consuming library dismount & re-mount cycle.. If 60 seconds isn't enoungh for your environment, you can increasse that timer.
It can be changed in BEutility.exe under "edit configuration" for a server or the registy value is “Next Job Wait Time” under “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Symantec\Backup Exec For Windows\Backup Exec\Engine\Misc”. I would suggest trying a setting of 120 seconds.
Your jobs do not overlap, so this this good.
The trick to having your jobs append to only one tape is to set the AP short enough for all your jobs to append but not so long that there are more than one appendable tape in the media set. Let's say, your jobs are daily jobs. You can set the AP to 23 hours. When the first daily job overwrites a tape, it is appendable for 23 hours. This allows the rest of the daily jobs to append to this tape. On the following day, this tape is no longer appendable. When the first daily job of the next day overwrites a tape, that tape is appendable for 23 hours and so on. With this setup, there is at most only one appendable tape in the media set at one time.
Read this document for a better understanding of OPP and AP
http://www.veritas.com/docs/000032654
