Back up Sets Not Appendable media full

[mas814]

I am having some problems with my backup jobs.  I have an autoloader, and have 14 tapes assicated with it.  A set of 7 for each week,  I've moved the media sets, because before I had a generall one for all the backups and wanted to seperate. 

The new set I've made has an overwrite protection peroid of 2 weeks, and an infinite allow appened for the append peroid.  After making this set I've preformed a quick erase, and let the backup jobs fly.  Right now I have one tape Full (looking at used capacity) overwrite protection out 2 weeks.  That is good so far. Now my other jobs failed beacuse they missed, and backup exec is looking for media.  The other 6 tapes for this week have an overwrite proction until two weeks, and are labeled as not appendable(media full).  The used capacity on all the tapes are 0 bytes.  I am thoughly confused here.

Some more info the jobs all have:

When the job beings: Append to media, overwrite if no appendable media is available

Media overwrite protection level: Partial- portect only allocated mida

Media overwrite scratch media before overwriting recyclale media contanied in the targeted media set

[Kiran_Bandi]

Do not assign medias to media set manually. Media set properties will be applied to all the medias associated with it. Let the medias be in Scratch media pool and let BE assign the medias to media sets as and when required. Now you can associate the remaining 6 medias to SCRATCH media set.

Also Appendable medias will not be used by BE to continue a job (spanning). BE will start the job with an appendable media (if configured to...) and need an overwritable media always to span. 

[mas814]

Thank you for your help.

So I did another media erase.  I did move the media sets back to the new media set after I did it the first time.

This time I did a quick erase, and then just ran the job without moving.  I did verify they where in scratch media set though.  What happened is each tape was loaded into the auto loader.  The overwrite proction changed, and no data was written.  The job is now looking for media.  

I have 10 current jobs.  I just read abit about this.  The way I am reading it if a job fills up a tape while writeing it needs a new tape (with overwrite protect off).  If a tape gets filled before the job is done it will write to a tape that is appendable, and has space on it.  

So maybe moving the 10 jobs into one job (there are 20 jobs in total one set for dailys, and one set for fulls).  I created these just now using the policy option.  There is also one extra job for exchange info store so that it is backed up to tape, and then to disk (it was having problems the other way around).  

Our plan used to be to take the tapes off site every Friday morning, the full back up runs Friday night, Monday-Thursday the incrementals run, and repeat.  Though it wouldn't be the end of the world if there is a better way with more tapes, and more offsite runs

[Kiran_Bandi]

So maybe moving the 10 jobs into one job (there are 20 jobs in total one set for dailys, and one set for fulls).

Have you created one job for each day backup? You can create a single job and schedule it to run on all the days.

I have 10 current jobs

All the 10 jobs are running/queued now? 

If a tape gets filled before the job is done it will write to a tape that is appendable, and has space on it.

Doesn't really matter. Appendable media can be used to start a backup job, incase if it gets filled then BE need an overwritable media to continue.

[Colin_Weaver]

Some points to be aware

1) No job that fills a tape will append to the next tape, this is irrespective of whether you set Append as your job start function, as this is only applicable at the job start

2) If you are trying to do a 2 week rotation of tapes then DO NOT set 2 week overwrite protection as you have to subtract the time it takes a backup to run (plus an extra amout to cover variation) and use this, as such and assuming your job takes less than a day to run then set 13 day overwrite protection

3) if you append to the tape, then reduce the overwrite protection by the number of days you are allowing appends - as otherwise each time you append the date/time when the tape is next overwritable is reset and moves away

4) Never manually move media from scratch into a media set unless you want to protect that media immediately. This is because the overwrite protection starts when it is moved, and the result is an instantly non-overwritable tape (unless you have set 0 hours overwrite protection on the set anyway)

5) if you fill a tape in a job, the overwrite protection is based on when it is filled and obviously it can't be appended to as it is full.

6) Check the overwrite protection tabs on the physical tapes (only suggesting this as you have stated you have empty tapes that could not be used that were in Scratch)

[mas814]

Thank you guys for informing me on alot of this I fine BE a bit confusing.  I don't know what I was thinking what the jobs I was having some problems with having the servers all back up on the same job.  I fixed those issues though so I just to all the selection lists and combined them, and made a policy with the wizzard. I do not know why I just been using policies for the jobs since I had to for exchange and incremental backups (for GRT).

All very infromative things Colin thank you! 

I forgot to check the write protection, but these are tapes that we have been using for awhile now I can't see them really having issues.  I just created this new media set, and its been driving me crazy.  Anyways I've been doing quick erases on all the tapes, importing at different times, and trying the backup job.  It seems just to load the tapes and put them back one by one, and chaning the overwrite peroid.  I even tried setting it to 1 hour and waiting. Still asking me for new tapes....

[mas814]

Not sure why I just did a quick erase, and  changed the media set back to the old one, and the backups are now working fine.

I really need to get a good backup in before I mess with anything else. I would like to ultmateally have a backup set for just the autoloader, or maybe two (one for full backups and one for incrementals)

[mas814]

Nevermind the last comment it wrote to one tape, and decided not to write to any other tapes.  Tommorrow I think I'll just put a ticket in with Symantec.

I don't get why it would think its ok to write to one of the tapes.  Then read the rest of the tapes, change the overwrite settings, and not write a single thing to the tapes