Backup Exec not filling tapes completely

[boydfish]

We run Backup Exec to complete a Full backup every Friday and this has been going quite well. Recently, however some of the tapes have not been completely used and spookily they all seem to be leaving around 50Gb of unused space. I should pooint out that it is not affecting all the tapes in a set some are showing as completely full but the overall unused space could probable save us at least one tape per backup.

Could this be the result of a recent update as we have not changed any of the job settings.

Jim

[RahulG]

How much data do you backup ? and what is the capacity of the tape?

Does the job start with append or overwrite .

Check the Job log how much data it backed up . Did the job requested for tape even though there is still space on the exisiting tape .

[Kiran_Bandi]

Hi boydfish,

Which model tapes you are using? If the tape is not filled till it's native capacity then it is a problem. If you are expecting the tape to be used till it's compressed capacity, it will not happen all the time. (Probably will happen in very less number of times). Check out the compression ration you are getting on those tapes and the type of data that particular tapes are getting written with. Because the compression ratio depends on the type of data.

Regards...

[Manu_Narayan]

I've been having the same issue.  I've had 2 support tickets in either and the techs cannot resolve the problem. 

I'm using LTO 3 tapes.  The tape shows 400.5GB of 400.5GB used capacity, but then will show Data that is like 1/2 that amount.  This is across multiple media sets, multiple jobs, and a dozen or so tapes. 

I'm running Backup Exec 2010 R2 13.0 Rev. 4164.

[boydfish]

RahulG - The backup covers all our servers and the native capacity is 200 Gb. The job is set to append first and a tape will continue to more than one server until it is full (195 Gb usually) and the carousel/backup exec take the tapes without prompting (There are no requests for tapes when we check).

Kiran - The tapes used to fill to their native capacity, in fact some still do (195 Gb) this has only just started to happen. All the tapes are in the correct media sets as well.

It is a mystery.

[pkh]

the carousel/backup exec take the tapes without prompting

This is the normal behaviour when you are using a tape library.  When BE needs another tape, it will just use an overwriteable from the media set or the scratch media set or from another media set without any prompt.  After all, you use a tape library so that you don't have to slot in tapes.

If you tapes are filling up to their native capacity, there is nothing wrong with your operation.

[RahulG]

There is nothing much we can do in this case , I have seen this behaviour in many environments ,that the tape does not get completely full. You can just try updating the drivers .

Just to isolate the issue try writing data to the tape using NT backup or some other backup utility , and check NTbackup is able write to the tape utill its full .

[boydfish]

Some of the tapes are filling to their full native capacity but others are not, I may check to see which ones are affected and run an erase on them to see if this sorts it out.