Backup Exec 15: Erase tapes with failed jobs

[dgingeri]

I was just hired to take over responsibility for the backup system (among other things) at my new company, mostly because the previous guy had things very messed up.  Now I've inherited a pair of Backup Exec 15 servers (one CAS and one managed) with a major history of failed jobs, wiped iSCSI disk storage, 20 partially filled tapes set to permanent overwrite protection with only one good backup job among them, and 4 scratch tapes that are set to overwrite protection until early next year.

Currently, our older Backup Exec 14 system is working properly again and doing backups, and I am tasked with the project of migrating the backups to the newer Backup Exec 15 systems.  

My main question is: how do I clear the history on these tapes so I can resue them? The program won't let me just delete the old, failed jobs.  Several are not appendable because "end marker unreadable".  If I set tapes to scratch and then back to the main media set (set to protect the data from overwriting for 4 weeks) it sets the overwrite protection to indefinite and won't let me use them at all.  The tapes are completely borked, and I'd like to just clear them all.  

Clearing the history of the failed backups would be nice too, and I am willing to remove and reconnect all the servers if necessary.  There is no usable backup job left on these systems.  

The main plan is to backup to iSCSI disk storage for 30 days and have all full backups duplicated to tape on Mondays and incrementals duplicated to tape Tue-Fri to be sent offsite for 90 days.  My library is a Quantum Scalar i40 with 25 slots licensed, one cleaning tape, 24 LTO-6 tapes, and 2 LTO-6 drives.  I think 2 scratch tapes should be fine for that much.  If I could clear the tapes, I might just be able to get there.  

[DarthBilly]

There are a few things you can do here. First, from the media sets properties that has all the Tape media, Select all of the media and right-click and choose to associate them with scratch. Now you should be able to erase all of them, but you won't need to erase them unless you want to rename them. Now for existing jobs. You should be able to delete them. You can try one at a time or all at once. If there are any issues you should get a pop-up with the offending job.

Once done, create a new media set with the protection time you want so you get that 90 days of protection for the tape. When you create a new job, make sure you point the job at the proper media set.

All histories can be deleted by selecting them and right-clicking and choosing delete.

[dgingeri]

Just setting them to scratch media and back put them on overwrite protection until January.  However, I was able to find a full erase function under the Slots view of the library.  When it erased them, it set them to the scratch media set, but I was able to move them to the right media set...

...and it set the overwrite protection on all the erased tapes except those in the scratch media set to 1/19/2017.  That didn't work the way I had hoped.  The tapes are erased, but I can't use them yet.  

I did get the history cleared out, though.  I didn't know I could fully delete entries there, so I hadn't tried.  Thanks for that.  

[Larry_Fine · Accepted solution]

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@dgingeri wrote:

Several are not appendable because "end marker unreadable".  If I set tapes to scratch and then back to the main media set (set to protect the data from overwriting for 4 weeks) it sets the overwrite protection to indefinite and won't let me use them at all.  The tapes are completely borked, and I'd like to just clear them all. 

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This is acommon point of confusion.  You can erase the tapes if you wish.  This puts them in the "Scratch" media set.  You can manually move the tapes into the "Scratch" media set.  The trick is to then LEAVE the tapes in the "Scratch" media set.  BE will pull tapes out of the "Scratch" media set and put them in the desired media set as backup jobs run that need overwritable media.

FYI, "end marker unreadable" is typically the result of an interrupted backup job.  The tape is easily re-usable by erasing it or moving it to "Scratch"

[dgingeri]

Ah, thanks, Larry, I did not know that part.  I had always just operated on existing media sets, not creating my own or populating them.  I thought the scratch set was for temporary storage for later transfer to the necessary media set or something.  That helps.