Backup to DISK

[BPK63]

I am building a new backup server with 7.5TB of drive space to back up my 9 servers with version 12.5.  Am using 11d at the moment backing up only to tape drive library.  Playing with one btd folder on the old server my nightly backup grabbed this test folder.  It has nothing to do with the tape pool that job is assigned to.  Is there a best practices for btd and should I put folders in different pools for different jobs?  Trying to set this up right the first time so the wrong jobs don't write wherever they want to.  Have similiar problems with 11d grabbing whatever tape it wants instead of the ones assigned to a job.  Any helpl is appreciated.  Thanks.

[CraigV]

Hi,

Your job should be set up to point to a specific piece of hardware. In the case of your nightly job, it should be pointed to your tape drive/library/autoloader. If it's grabbing your B2D folder, it could mean that the tape was busy with something else for instance, and it was pushed to the next available device...your B2D. If you've set up your jobs correctly, this shouldn't happen unless there is an error.
That way you effectively partition your jobs.
Here is a tech article from Symantec's site that explains the Best Practices for B2D in 11D, but you can apply it to 12.5 as well:

http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/285733.htm

From my side, I would create different B2D folders if you have multiple jobs, and simply point each job to that folder. If you're backing all the servers up in the same job, then you'd have to look at creating folders for every day you run your backup.
Hope this helps!

[Ktendolkar]

Please find the above snap of creating backup to disk folder.
In the last tab of Concurrent operations you can enter the number of jobs that can run simultaneously on the a backup to folder. You can run more than one job at a time.
Other tabs are self explanatory, please let me know for any further queries.

Regards
KT

[CraigV]

Ja, the above is pretty standard stuff when creating a B2D. Those are settings that you can play with, but I normally leave mine as is.

[BPK63]

I have too much going on this week backing up but next week I'll play with it again.  I created the backup to disk folder and created a media pool and it had nothing to do with the nightly backup which goes to a daily tape pool.  No idea why it kicked off and went to the btd folder.  Need to figure this out before the new big horsepower server is online with all the new stuff.

[BPK63]

I see what I did.  By default my current backup server, all the jobs point to "all devices" on the server, and then a specific media set is chosen.  When I switch to the BTD server, I'm going to have to change all those jobs to the overland tape unit instead of "all devices".  Every time I create a BTD folder it creates another one under devices.  I'm starting to get the jist of this now.

[CraigV]

Yep. If need be, you can create the B2D, and disable it until needed...as in when you create a job/policy to use that. Doing so makes sure that the B2D doesn't accidentally get written too.

[CraigV]

Any news?

[Colin_Weaver · Accepted solution]

You might need to look at media sets and the overwrite protection settings, and whether or not to partition the tape slots in your library as well as Backup Devices and their pools. as you appear to be describing more than one problem.

Sending jobs to specific Devices or Pools of devices will limit where media can be used from, but if media from more than 1 media set is present in the device or pool then there is a possibility for a piece of media to be moved from one media set to another (depending on your media protection settings)

What you probably don't realize is that Backup Exec was designed to try and find a piece of media (available in the targetted device or Pool) as long as it is overwritable  - the idea being that if a job starts it is assumed that you really really want the data to be backed up at that point in time. Although the media set used by the job is part of the criteria for selection this only deteremines what order to try and find usable media in - it does not restrict the use to ONLY media already in the specific media set against an Overwrite Operation. If you look in the admin guide for the section on Managing Media you will find there are details of the settings that control the search oder for overwriteable media and you can see that every sequence contains "Recyclable Media in Any Media Set" as one of the options.

You can limit this however - by using sperate B2D devices for different types of job - and in the case of library loaded tapes by Partitioning the slots in the library so that specific jobs can only take media from specific slots
http://entsupport.symantec.com/docs/206843

Once the partitions are setup you can use them as target devices in the job configurations - just make sure there are enough tapes in any one partition for the jobs you send to the partition as otherwise you are likely to get failures asking for media.