Backup Exec 12 Overwrite protection stopping backups

[rwgagnon]

Hi, Up until the last month, we have been backing up our server successfully with BUE12 to DAT tapes. I have the tapes in a media library called Daily, which I have set to be Appendable (after 1 hour protection) and Overwriteable. The tapes are filling up, and some are full, so I assumed that the Overwrite Protection set to OFF would allow the tapes to be automatically recycled. I also went into the Options and set up the Allow Overwrite with no Prompting radio button.  The problem is that each morning when I come in, the job scheduled for 11 PM the previous evening has ejected the (correct tape) and has a message indicating that I should insert overwritable media. I put the tape back in, press OK on the alert message and the backup works correctly. This has been happening to all tapes lately, and the only thing I can see that is different is that the majority of the tapes are now full, but I didn't think that I should have to erase all the tapes with the options I have selected. Any ideas would be appreciated.

[Kiran_Bandi]

Have you checked the media properties - Overwrite Protected Until property?

I put the tape back in, press OK on the alert message and the backup works correctly

May be by the time you are reaching office in the morning, the media might be becoming overwritable.

Coming to alert you can configure automatic response.

Refer http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO22882 for configuing automatic response to alerts.

[rwgagnon]

Thanks for the input, but I have checked the media properties and the Overwrite Protection is set to NONE in the main options, which according to the message I get on the media properties, superseeds the setting of Overwrite Protection set to 1 hour on the Daily media set properties. (I originally incorrectly stated that the Allow Append was set to 1 hour, but is is set to Infinite, Allow Append and the Overwrite is set to the minimum of 1 hour on the media set properties.)

The Alert message that I am getting is at 11:50 in the evening, and it says:

Media 'Monday-2' is overwrite protected.

The media in drive 'TANDBERG 1' is currently allocated and is not available for overwrite operations.

Media Set: Daily
Overwrite Protection Until: 5/15/2012 12:26:58 AM.
Appendable until: Infinite - Allow Append

Setting the alert to automatically be responded to will not help as it also ejects the tape.

[Kiran_Bandi]

As the tape was not overwritable when the job was started, BE is ejecting the tape and asking for an overwritable media. 

When was the last write happened (completed) to media Monday-2?  Because OPP will be calculated from that time. 

The Alert message that I am getting is at 11:50 in the evening

This means, the tape might became full after writing some data to it as part of the same job. As a result the tape has become overwrite protected for an hour according to your media set settings and BE is prompting for an overwritable media to continue backups as expected.

[rwgagnon]

Your last paragraph makes the most sense, but the question is why is the tape not over-writable after running out of room and "reusing" itself. The 1 hour overwrite protection should be ignored based on the fact that the system wide option of setting Overwrite protection to NONE with NO PROMPT is set.

I suppose the real issue may be simply that it is ejecting the tape after it runs out of room and it is now asking for a tape (and mentioning that it needs to be overwritable, confusing the issue), bur really it is just asking for a tape with the same name. So if this is true, is there a way to not eject the tape when it is full? (I do have "eject tape when job completes" selected, but the job is not complete at this point.)

[Ken_Putnam]

I suppose the real issue may be simply that it is ejecting the tape after it runs out of room and it is now asking for a tape (and mentioning that it needs to be overwritable, confusing the issue), bur really it is just asking for a tape with the same name. So if this is true, is there a way to not eject the tape when it is full? (I do have "eject tape when job completes" selected, but the job is not complete at this point.)

When a tape runs out of room, either for an append or overwrite job, BE will continue only on another Overwriteable tape

Even if you set the Global Overwrite Protection to NONE and the OPP to 0 hours, BE will never rewind and continue on the same tape, since that is essentially a quick erase and would make any data backed up before this happens non-retrievable

If you data has grown to the point that you are filling the tape in a stand-alone drive, you only real option is to get a larger drive or a second drive and split the backup into to two jobs (which you could probably run concurrently)

Since Cascading drive pools disappeared with v12, you cannot just get a second similar drive and let the job roll over onto the 2nd drive.

[rwgagnon]

That explains what is going on and why it is happening now. The tapes are full or very close to full. I guess an erase is in order to continue using them, or purchasing additional tapes.

Thank you all for your help!

[Ken_Putnam]

I guess an erase is in order to continue using them, or purchasing additional tapes.

If you set your OPP correctly, you should be able to manage without manually erasing/re-initializing your tapes

How long you want to keep data will determine how many tapes you need

For example, you might keep daily data for 1 week, and weekly data for a month and keep the last weekly of the month or a monthly for a year

If you can present some specifics, we can help you sort out media sets and OPP periods to meet your needs

[rwgagnon]

Well, I set it up so I had tapes Monday thru Thursday, which I rotated every week, allowing append. I also made 5 tapes called 1st Friday, 2'nd Friday through 5th Friday, which I rotate through monthly, so I have tapes with data for at least a month, but again they are appendable so I get more than one full backup appended on the tape. (All backups are Full) For this server, I did not make a monthly tape to rotate through, but have done so on other servers. I set them all into a media pool called Daily which I left pretty much unprotected (Overwrite 1 hour, Append Infinite, overrode the Overwrite protection at the Options level for NONE and no Prompt.)

[pkh]

You should always set your Overwrite Protection Level to at least Default.  When you set the OPL to None, there is no overwrite protection all.  You can do all your OPP and AP settings, but there will be no protection when the OPL is set to None.  Furthermore, there are earlier discussions which mentioned "funny" problems when the OPL is set to None.

If your Mon-Thu tape is getting full, just have another tape and swap the tapes in mid-week.  Since you are using a stand-alone, this is the only option.  If you let the tape fill up, then it will be eject and you would be prompted to insert an overwriteable tape for the job to continue.  If you reach this stage, you can insert another overwriteable tape when you reach the office in the morning.

[rwgagnon]

Actually, the data set that is being backed up is only 17GB and I have 196GB of space on the tapes. The desire is to let multiple backups happen on each tape until they get full, and then I thought that the point of making them overwritable was so that when they became full, the tape would be overwritten from the beginning again, possibly preserving data further up the tape that has not been overwritten yet. Isn't this the point of selecting the Overwritable option in the job setup?

[Kiran_Bandi]

the tape would be overwritten from the beginning again, possibly preserving data further up the tape that has not been overwritten yet.

No, This is not what actually happens. Overwriting a tape means, overwriting all the data that is existing on the tape with new data. It will not just overwrite some part with new data by preserving the data on other part of the tape.

(For better understanding, you can think of overwriting operation as erasing the tape completely and writing new data.)

Now with the present settings, no protection to your backup data.

[pkh]

You can sort of achieve what you want with 2 tapes.   Once the first tape is full, the job will write to the second tape.  With a properly set up OPP, the first tape will expire when the second tape is being appended to and is thus ready to be written to when the second tape is full.