BackupEx 2010R2 how to fully use a Tape

[vcosta84]

Hello,

What I am trying to Accomplish is getting my Full Backup sets to write to a tape and fill it up without going to another tape. 

I have a TL4000 system with LTO6 tapes. Each tape can hold up to 2.3TB. My biggest Full job is 1tb and they go down to a small 1gig of data. But what will happen is a tape will be used and it will have 200gigs on the tape, it will be sitting idle, then another job comes up and wants to backup to tape, but it will give a Error stating to put a tape in the library that has more space or is allowed to be appended, but the job might be at max 500gigs, so that tape with 200 gigs has more than enough room. 

Is there a way to set the tapes so they are used till they are filled, then can move to another tape? 

Any help is appreciated! 

[Larry_Fine]

Backup Exec doesn't consider the available space on a tape during a backup as BE writes until the tape reports that it is full.  I think that BE does consider available space during a test job.

Basically, if you have a tape that isn't full and BE will not append to it (by requesting importing media), then that tape is either in a different media set than the current backup job or the append period for the media set of the partial tape is set too short.

[Colin_Weaver]

You need to look at the start choice (append vs overwrite), the media set specified in the jobs and the actual job ordering

If you did something like this

Job 1 scheduled to start at 18:00 and is backing up the biggest section of data and starts as overwrite

Job 2 scheduled to start after you know job 1 should have finished, set to same media set as Job 1 with start as append

Job 3 scheduled to start after you know job 2 should have finished, set to same media set as Job 1 & 2 with start as append

etc

If not using a library (but a single stand-alone drive) then you could actually make the last job each day eject the tape at the end to make things easier for whoever changes the tape and to make sure that there is no way to overwrite the most recent backuo without very specific human intervention.

If you actually fill the tape it will always ask for a different tape to continue but you should be able to get close to a full tape as long as you know the amounts of data involved.

If you specify a different media set for the later jobs then a different tape will always be needed (unless the job 1 tape has no overwrite protection left which would result in data loss)

If you start Job 1 and there is no overwritable tape available at the start then it will sit asking for you to insert a tape - which will then have a knock on effect for the other jobs.

If you specify a job that starts as an overwwrite as not the first job in the sequence then again it will look to use a different tape (unless no overwrite protection on the earlier tapes which would result in data loss)