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BE2012 limiting concurrent jobs to tape library

PCAU
Level 4

Hello

Is it still possible, like it was in BE2010 to limit the maximum concurrently running jobs on the media server? I see the concurrent write session options for disk based storage but not for a tape library or the media server itself.

Staging the start times of backup jobs is far from ideal.

Thanks

 

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pkh
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The tape library is automatically constrainted by the number of tape drives in it.  It can only run 1 job per drive at a time.  Hence the number of concurrent jobs for the media server is contrainted by the number of tape drives and the number of concurrent writes for each B2D folder.

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pkh
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The tape library is automatically constrainted by the number of tape drives in it.  It can only run 1 job per drive at a time.  Hence the number of concurrent jobs for the media server is contrainted by the number of tape drives and the number of concurrent writes for each B2D folder.

PCAU
Level 4

Thanks pkh but I think my point has been missed. Lets say I have a tape library with 4x tape drives however I do not have the data throughput to feed all 4 drives at their minimum data rates. I have the need to artificially restrict the tape library to run fewer jobs concurrently, in BE2010 this wasn't an issue as the option was there.

I am aware that I could stagger the job start times, or manually disable a drive, or reduce the amount of tapes available but none of these are ideal.

pkh
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Then you are one of the lucky few who has more media than is required and I don't mean this in a sarcastic way.  If this feature is missing in BE 2012, put it up as an idea in the Idea section.  If enough users agree with you, it might get picked up in some future release of BE.

RLeon
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Not sure if I get the meaning, but you can try using the Storage Pool feature. It lets you group individual tape drives together, which is then available when you setup backup jobs.
So if you only want to use two drives out of four during a backup, then create a Storage Pool with only two drives as members, and point to it in your backup job configuration.

Storage tab > Configure storage button > Storage Pools

PCAU
Level 4

Thanks, yes pkh it's a rather abnormal situation to have, albiet temporary. I will post this in the ideas section.

RLeon, thanks also for the suggestion That's another way to achieve it, but i'm still targeting jobs to particular devices/pools which i'd rather avoid also.

RLeon
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All your backup jobs could target the same artificially-crippled Storage Pool, so that the number of concurrent jobs from any servers/agents would be limited to the number of tape drives you assigned to the pool.

For tape, this has the same effect as the concurrent write session option for disk storage.

For servers that have enough throughput to feed all tape drives, just target the default tape library (not the crippled pool) so that all the drives could be used concurrently.

Larry_Fine
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re: Thanks pkh but I think my point has been missed. Lets say I have a tape library with 4x tape drives however I do not have the data throughput to feed all 4 drives at their minimum data rates. I have the need to artificially restrict the tape library to run fewer jobs concurrently, in BE2010 this wasn't an issue as the option was there.

What option in BE 2010 are you referring to?  I don't recall an option to limit the number of tape drives in use, although you could achive that with pools and/or job scheduling.  This isn't a common question.

Donald_Eady
Level 6
Employee Accredited

PCAU.. Is there any other software that is controlling the tape library?

PCAU
Level 4

nope

PCAU
Level 4

It was an option to restrict the concurrent jobs running on the media server, not nessesarily the tape library specifically. However I've installed 2010 on a test server and embarrassingly cannot find the option myself!