11-22-2012 05:12 AM
We are using Backup Exec 2012 to backup multiple servers with an HP 8-drive Autoloader. We are doing a full backup on Saturdays and differential backups Monday-Friday.
Our 8 tapes hold about 1.5TB each and full backups take about 500GB and around 50-70GB per differential backup. The tape is partitionned with slots 1-6 for differentials and 7-8 for full.
Overwrite protection is set for 1 week for the full tapes and 4 weeks for differential tapes.
The problem we are having is that the the differential backups are always written on the same tape. We want to have the backups spread on the other 5 differential tapes (append). All tapes are set at infinite append. Right now, it only seems to switch tapes when the tape is full.
11-22-2012 07:09 AM
Modify the append period. See here:
http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH5459
If you modify the append period to 6 days, it will not be appended for 6 days.
11-22-2012 07:14 AM
Really? I thought that the Append Period was the duration it could be appended to and it would become non-appendable after that.
11-22-2012 07:24 AM
Ah, sorry you are right. (was doing two things at the same time....)
But that is a setting you should configure right, modify it to 1 hour and the next day it will not be appended and backup exec will get a new tape.
11-22-2012 07:39 AM
That's my problem. I want the tapes to be appendable so we can stack multiple differentials on the same tape. We just don't want 20 differentials on tape 1 and 2-6 empty.
I can set the append limit to 1 hour, but I'd need a way to make it appendable again after 2-3 days.
11-22-2012 07:42 AM
Then you could partition your library, and configure specific jobs to a specific partition.
11-22-2012 08:17 AM
Partition is currently:
Slots 1-6 = Diff
Slots 7-8 = Full
So, I'd have to partition:
Slot 1 = Monday Diff
Slot 2 = Tuesday Diff
Slot 3 = Wednesday Diff
etc...
?
11-22-2012 05:32 PM
I don't know why you want to spread out your differential backups. Each time you append to a tape, the overwrite protection of the tape gets extended. When you spread out your differential backups, you are making a lot of tapes not overwritable and thus consuming a lot of tapes. It is better to use 1 tape to store all the differentials from a particular week and then use another tape for the next week. This way your tapes get freed up faster.
11-23-2012 05:01 AM
The company I work for bought 25 LTO-5 tapes! So we've got a major surplus.
11-26-2012 07:57 AM
...already mentioned in the OP's original post.