01-24-2012 07:07 AM
Hello!
I'm running BackupExec 2010r3 on a [virtual] Server 2008x64 (r2/SP2) host (ESX 4.1, BladeCenter, with an IBM T2900 autoloader physically attached to the blade my backup server runs on), and every time I do a full backup job of anything that needs to span more than one tape, the job hangs, and waits for someone to respond to an "alert" to insert some overwritable media. This is troublesome because we set our full backups to run over weekend, during hours that I prefer to be sleeping or "living life," and perplexing because I've set all our jobs and media sets to append only, overwrite protected until forever... so I’m thinking it shouldn't be looking for an overwritable tape in the first place, and it's not going to find one anywhere anyway.
If anyone can point me in the right direction or tell me what I need to change to get these jobs running as configured, it'd be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
Solved! Go to Solution.
01-30-2012 01:49 AM
When you start a job, BE can Over-write and even Append the tape
When job continues and needs to span on 2nd or 3rd media, Tape needs to be Over-writable.
A good article over media managment:
http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH5459
01-24-2012 07:21 AM
Whenever the backup jobs spans over multiple tapes then from 2nd tape onwards BE prompts
for an overwritable, its by design.
01-24-2012 07:54 AM
the job hangs, and waits for someone to respond to an "alert" to insert some overwritable media.
You can set an autoresponse to this prompt. See
http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH23614
Event ID 58061: "Please insert overwritable media.. Respond OK to acknowledge. Respond Cancel to cancel the operation" is reported in the Event Viewer Application Log
01-24-2012 06:27 PM
You can set an availability window for your selection list. Once the availability window is exceeded, the job will cancel automatically.
01-27-2012 08:09 AM
Thanks for the responses... is there any way to have the job continue (automatically) on appendable media? I know it's not really recommended, or necessarily a good idea, but for the current environment, this is the way it has to be, at least for the short term, and it would be... not a major pain in the pants-area if I could get the large full backups to span tapes on our appendable-only weekly media sets.
01-27-2012 08:37 AM
Move an Over-writebale tape to Scratch media set, BE will automatically pick the second tape to append
without giving an prompt.
Second tape needs to be over-writeable, in order to be appended..Be cannot span a tape on appended media making it immposible to restore.
01-27-2012 09:31 AM
is there any way to have the job continue (automatically) on appendable media?
Sorry, no
Only the first volume of a multi-volume job will append. All subsequent volumes will be Overwrite.
01-27-2012 07:52 PM
That's so very much not what I wanted to hear, but thanks for telling me and saving me some time trying to do what can't be done. (And just BTW, I'm not the one who gave you the downvote. :\ )
So, as a quick follow up - the solution then, with having our media sets as appendable, and jobs set to only use appendable media would be to add a tape (or two or three, since we're still on LTO3) to the magazine, set them as scratch media, like suggested above, and then those overwriteable tapes would only be used on jobs that need to span tapes?
01-27-2012 10:55 PM
You can do that, but very soon you would run out of slots in your library. You should set your OPP to a reasonable period so that your tapes can overwritten when the data are no longer required.
01-30-2012 01:49 AM
When you start a job, BE can Over-write and even Append the tape
When job continues and needs to span on 2nd or 3rd media, Tape needs to be Over-writable.
A good article over media managment:
http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH5459
01-30-2012 03:43 AM
Yup, looks like that's what I'll have to do.
Thanks!