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Backup Exec 16 - How to rotate media for offsite storage

momadha
Level 1

I just started using BE 16. after having used an older version for the last five years. I backup on external drives. I used to create a weekly (eg., name it 121016) folder with subfolders (Full, Diff, Exchange). The following week I would remove the external drive and take it offsite, plug another external drive and create new folder (e.g., 121716) and so on. I'd keep certain backup folder for a month, six months or even a few years. I am having a hard time doing the same in version 16 though. How would I go about doing that? Thanks.

3 REPLIES 3

Colin_Weaver
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

You must have been using a version of Backup Exec older than 2010 R3 as we have NOT allowed renaming of the B2D location (or putting multiple B2Ds on one disk volume) through 4 versions.

 

Basically what you need to do (assuming USB disks) is

Create a single backup to disk storage device on each USB disk

Create a drive pool and add each USB disk to it (you can add later disks to it as needed)

Target the jobs to the drive pool and BE will use whichever disk is connected at the time (so make sure only 1 disk is connected)

You cannot have separate Differential and Full folders (in fact there was no real point in doing that with the older versions either as they still depended on the full in a DR situation) and if you write a second week to the same disk it also has to use the same structure.

Finally make sure thet the differential sets are always on the same disk as the full set they are linked to as GRT restores and/or point in time restores will have issues if the chain back to the full is on disks that are not online

If using RDX carttridges, you don't use a drive pool and you configure the RDX drive as Removable Storage but otherwise the principle remains the same in taht you cannot specify the folders within the disks.

 

A BIG WARNING - you need to read up on DLM and how retention times now work as BE will now try to erase older sets behind the scenes as long as the data is beyond the retention - with USB and RDX this ONLY happens when the disks are online and there is a default setting so that any USB disk that is offline for longer than 2 weeks and any RDX disk that is offline for 4 weeks will be write protected for you to avoid mishaps against long term vaulted sets.

Hi Colin,

a quick question about a drive pool, would it be a problem if I had 2 USB disks connected permanently and 2 USB disks

connected as well that are rotated on a weekly basis and are added to a 2-disk pool ?

I just want to make sure that my weekly jobs for off-site

storage are only targeted to the roating USB disks in a 2-disk pool. After creating a pool for some reason I see all disks

listed under the pool, even the ones that I'm not planning on using for the off-site storage/rotation? Thanks

Colin_Weaver
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

You can have two pools, one for your permanently online disks and one for those that you rotate and then target jobs (or duplicate jobs) to either appropriate pools or disk storage devices to suit your needs.

You need to make sure you are not using Backup Exec's default disk pool (which will contain all disk) and make sure you only add the disk you want into your custom pools. And then configure the jobs for the pools or individual drives.