5 Drive USB Weekly Rotation

[Joe_Balberde_2]

Hello, I am having a bit of a problem with my current BE setup.  I do nightly backups of around 100 GB.  I currently use 5 300GB USB drives to do this.  I have them setup as Backup to Disk Folders.  The difficulty I am having right now is the necessity to bring the drive "Online".  I have to run a job and then right click on the folder to bring it online daily.

The issue is many times we have non IT staff change the drives.  What i am asking is if anybody has a way to automate this process using any means.

Thanks for your help

Joe Balberde

[Joe_Balberde_2]

Anybody?

[Greg_Meister]

Joe,

You could try scheduling an Inventory job to run on the B2D folder on a daily basis.

Greg

[Joe_Balberde_2]

I have tried that, what ends up happening is the Folder reads as offline.  I then have to manualy bring it online.  If there is a way to do this with a script or job, it would be a soultion.

Joe

[Greg_Meister]

Joe,

Check out http://ftp.support.veritas.com/pub/support/products/Backup_Exec_for_WindowsNT/287388.pdf

We do not provide support for creating scripts, but the commands are there to enable/disable devices, as well as pause/resume devices. Hopefully, that will meet your needs.

Greg

[Wes_Stewart]

This has been a problem that has driven me nuts for a couple of years. I was really hoping it would be fixed in 11d.  It really should be considered a bug in the software.  I was sure hoping for a better solution then being given a 238 page document and being told we don't support it, figure it out for yourself.

[Joe_Balberde_2]

Thank you for the response, I have looked over the document a few times.  I see commands relating to the device but I do not see something to bring it online.  I am looking for the equivalent of right clicking and selecting "Online".  Right now I run an inventory after replacing the drive and right click the Backup folder to bring it online.

Perhaps somebody more skilled then I can look at this document and give me a hand.

Thanks

Joe

P.S. Or is it possible to get a "non" supported page number from you Greg?

Message Edited by Joe Balberde on 04-12-200701:55 PM

[blcpa]

Joe,

I saw your message and as I am about to try something similar, thought I'd throw in 2 cents. I thought I'd try the same with the newer Firewire IEEE drives.

Could you use a USB hub and set up 5 drives at 1 time (test with just 2 drives), then bring all 5 on-line. I guess you would also have to create 5 backup jobs, 1 for each day of the week pointing to the correct drive, as you will now have 5 drives. But I wonder - if you pull Mondays backup out after it completes correctly, do all the other drives push up a drive and - now you have to run a job again to set them all up? 

Russ Maddock

[Joe_Balberde_2]

Hi Russ,

In my particular case having the drives all plugged in at the same time won't work. We usually have one of the 5 drives at the bank vault, and in the future plan to have one at another secured location.  Right now the way our Jobs work is we have 4 Folders on each drive labeled "Week1, Week2, Week3. Week4" so we have backup Jobs setup for every day in our 4 week cycle.  I appreciate the thought but I just don't think it would work for us.

Joe

[Greg_Meister]

Joe,

The following, from an outside source (and posted in another thread with a similar issue), may be helpful.

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/12009443/m/484006870831

For obvious reasons, the usual disclaimers apply. :)

Greg

Message Edited by Greg Meister on 04-13-200712:50 PM

[Joe_Balberde_2]

That link was very helpful, I have a script written that seems to do the job.  I will post it after a few days of testing.

Thanks again

Joe

[Joe_Balberde_2]

Ok here are the two scripts I have been running for a few days now. 

The first script does an inventory on all 4 of the backup to disk folders I have. From what i can tell you must do this before running the other script.

Code:

e:cd backup execbemcmd -o117 -dWeek1bemcmd -o117 -dWeek2bemcmd -o117 -dWeek3bemcmd -o117 -dWeek4

 

The second script brings them online by pausing and then enabling them. 

Code:

e:cd backup execbemcmd -o60 -dWeek1bemcmd -o61 -dWeek1bemcmd -o60 -dWeek2bemcmd -o61 -dWeek2bemcmd -o60 -dWeek3bemcmd -o61 -dWeek3bemcmd -o60 -dWeek4bemcmd -o61 -dWeek4

 
So far this has worked great for me.  Thank you Greg for pointing me to the Ars Forum Post