BE2012 procedure...question

[CEIMaine]

Hello,

I know this might be alot to ask for a Internet forum but being new to BE2012 (not for resale, non-profit licensing, so no support) and I cant seem to wrap my head around this procedure.If its the new interface or what but I woud like to acheive this:

We are using 1.5tb LTO Ultrium 5's

M     All servers, Non Critical volumes, Incremental to tape 1 of Robotic Lib 1

T      All servers, Non Critical volumes, Incremental to tape 2 of Robotic Lib 1

W    All servers, Non Critical volumes, Incremental to tape 3 of Robotic Lib 1

TH    All servers, Non Critical volumes, Incremental to tape 4 of Robotic Lib 1

F      All servers, Non Critical volumes, Exchange Store, SQL DB, Full tape 5 of Robotic Lib 1

SA   CRITICAL (Bare metal FULL to Disk then to tape) to tape 6 (and 7 if needed)of Robotic Lib 1

SU  CLEANING, INVENTORY, CATALOG ETC

I can see how to create differnt jobs for each server for each day but ther must be a simpler solution. Grouping servers dosent let me get that granular with my selections.

Any help or points in the right direction would be immensly appreaciated!

[Kiran_Bandi]

With BE 2012, you must create seperate jobs to backup multiple servers. Exactly saying minimum one job is required to backup a server. Multiple servers cannot be backedup using a single backup job.

EDIT: But one for each day one job is not required. You can schedule one job to run multiple times.

[Colin_Weaver]

I'd suggest Parttioning the libary to force the jobs to specific slots (sorry BE 2012 is not in front of me so can't give you exact steps)

Once the libary is parttioned you can then target each day's jobs to each partition starting each day with an Overwite and then appending the later jobs starting them on staggered times. This is made complicated by the limitation of one job per server.

What you haven't told us is how long you want to keep each tape and how many tapes you have for a rotation so we can't really give you any guidelines on media sets etc

Also Inventory and catalog operations are only needed for an empty database or when pulling in old tapes or tapes from another server. In normal backup operations inventory and catalog information is dynamically updated

[CEIMaine]

Ok. I have the library partitioned to reflect all the availible slots.

So I simply create a monday job and point it to say slot 1 and Tuesday job to Slot 2...etc?

The one job per server thing is kind of a pain at this stage of my familiarity with BE2012

I plan on overwriting the m-th tapes weekly. Since my Friday tape will be taken off site.

Thanks for the info on the inventory and cataloging.

also thank you for taking time to answer my questions.

[BillB_of_the_BE]

You can create each of the 'jobs' more easily by multi-selecting all of the servers and then creating each day's job.  For example, select all servers and then create the Monday incremental job and target it to the first partition, then select the servers for Tuesday and target to the next partition, etc.   The result will be  sets of jobs for each server, and if you want to monitor them en masse, you'll have to multiselect the servers to get a combined view.   This is off the top of my head so YMMV.  Let me know how this works.

[BillB_of_the_BE]

Oh, you can also create a single job definition per server that houses the F fulls and the M-T incrementals.   To create the job, multiselect as above and add Full and Incrementals with their schedules, days and target partitions.  You can then go back to each server that has Exchange and SQL and select them for your F fulls.   You may even select exchange and SQL for all servers and only the ones that have the applications will be affected.  

[pkh]

You are making things complicated for yourself by trying to manage the tapes, instead of letting BE and the tape library manage them for you.  There is no necessity that a certain day's data should end up on a particular tape.  See my article on this subject.

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/must-mondays-backup-be-monday-tape

If you want to go ahead with your proposed scheme, you would need 7 partitions/media sets and as such you would need 7 jobs.

In your scheme, you are basically overwriting your set of tapes each week.  You could just set up a media set with an OPP of 6 days and let BE pick the tape(s) that it needs.  You would only need 1 incremental job instead of 5.

[CEIMaine]

Hey everyone.

  Many thanks for the responses. I figured out how to create multiple jobs for multiple servers over multiple tape slots. Its slated for test run all next week. Its a little cumbersome IMO but if it works it should be a "set it and forget it type thing"

Is there a way for BE to calculate the amount of data that is to be backed up before it runs. Id like to to "Bare Metal to tape" for my core servers but some of our devices have OS drives over 1TB. If BE only writes the data that is used then that will be great but if its a "bit for bit" copy ala Ghost then ill run out of tapes quite quickly!