Backup Exec 10d

[Mikefer]

So I'm faced with an odd problem. I am currently using a robotic library with all media as marked as overwritable. However, I came in this morning and I have an alert asking me to "Insert overwriteable Media". I've tried running different jobs which all are complaining with the same alert. All jobs overwrite the contents of the existing tape.

I hope somebody can point me in the right direction.

Thanks,

Mike

[Ken_Putnam]

If you inventory all the slots, do the tapes show in BLUE or BLACK?  Blue would be overwriteable, Black is protected

What is the OPP for the media sets that you are using?

Have you partitioned the loader, or do jobs just grab any tape in the library as selected by BackupExec?

[Mikefer]

All media is in blue and says overwiteable.  (I am running the inventory on 23 partitions right now)

What do you mean by OPP?

I have partitioned, and my jobs use specific partitions.

One other question. This robotic library contains 23 tapes all partition 23 times. However, under Media it shows a good junk of tapes offline, is this normal???


Mike




Message Edited by Mikefer on 09-24-2007 09:03 AM

[Ken_Putnam]

OPP = Overwrite Protection Period

If all the tapes show in Blue before the job starts, and if you are using one-slot partitions, it sounds like the jobs are filling the tape and asking for another

Does anything get backed up before the alert?  If so how much?

What kind of media are you using?

Are you using compression?   If so, HW or SW?

[Mikefer]

It's setup per one slot like you said.

OPP is set to "Append to media, overwrite if no appendable media is available."

Compression is set to "Hardware"

[Ken_Putnam]

OPP is set to "Append to media, overwrite if no appendable media is available

Ahhh

This will work until the tape fills up, then you will be asked for Overwriteable media, since any continuation tape must be overwritable

Do you ever swap tapes (weekly, everyother week?) or do the same tapes stay in the loader all the time?

Message Edited by Ken Putnam on 09-24-2007 10:37 AM

[Mikefer]

The same tapes stay in the loader.

[Ken_Putnam]

You're going to have to either

1)  drag the existing tapes to scratch (probably not an option, since this will remove all the exising backups

2)  get a second set of tapes and setup your  jobs to Overwrite on Friday (for example)  and Append the rest of the week, and swap tapes each week, which will give you the ability to go back two weeks should you need to restore

[Mikefer]

At this point I'm totally confused.

I've checked a job which used a certain partion which in turns uses a tape. I relabled that device partition which formats the contents and tried to backup agian with the same failed result. It does about 3 hours of backing up, then junks out. The tapes are 450 GIG each, and when looking at how far the backup went, it shows "263,859,052,527".

So then I figured I'd make two slots as partitions and try again which again failed with the same result. However, looking at this two slot partition, one of them is a tape and the other one it doesn't appear to be a tape. It says (Cleaning Media) for that one.

So now I've recreated another two slot partition which shows two tapes. I've set the job to use this partition, and I am hoping that it will complete.

Any ideas why this is happening with 450 GIG tapes???



Message Edited by Mikefer on 09-25-2007 12:42 PM

[Edward_Charles]

Just wondering, (not an answer to your question) why not just use hard drives to backup to instead of those tapes?

We use SATA drives and just hot swap them in and out to take offsite and works great and fast!

Regards,

[Ken_Putnam]

What type of media are these tapes? 

Remember that if the 450GB rating is for compressed data, this is usually figured at 2:1 compression, a value you will rarely of ever see in the real world.  I generally figure about 1.2-1.3:1 until a specific server has backed up 5-6 times and I can get a server specific average