About tape best practices

[dpelligra]

Hi,

I'm in trouble using my tape library for backups. Thing is I have 20 tapes BE can use. I added all of em in a pool my backup uses with an overwrite protection period of 2 weeks and an add period infinite.

I launched the first backup with no problem at all. It used a blank tape and worked fine. The second backup was incremental and used the same tape. So the add period being OK it worked.

The third and last backup didn't start as the tape used my the two firsts was full and all other tapes in the pool have a 2-week overwrite protection period. So the backup just won't run.

First and second are full backup using only the pool I created and running on saturdays. The second is an incremental job using the same pool and running every day.

How can I properly configure those tapes ?

I add that i quick formated every tape prior to the first backup job.

Thanks,

[Kiran_Bandi · Accepted solution]

No need to move the tapes manually into any media sets. Let them be in SCRATCH media set so that, BE can move them into media sets automatically as and when required. Once a media is assigned with a media set, it inherits the properties configured to that media set which inturn create problems to BE in using that medias for completing backup jobs. 

[dpelligra]

Hi,

Thanks it worked :)

Before marking it as solved, could you please confirm that if I want a separate full weekly backup and a separate full monthly backup I have to create two media set each attached one of the jobs and BE will use different tapes accordingly ?

Thx,

[CraigV]

Hi,

Yes you would want this...each job would have a different retention period. Using a GFS policy, this would be created automatically during the creation process.

Thanks!