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BackupExec choose the wrong tape, instead of the set up one !

Fabri_Fabri
Level 4

BackupExec 11d - Version 11.0 Rev 7170.

I just replaced a media library from DELL (Powervault 124T) from LTO2 to LTO4 capacity and set up BackupExec 11d to work with the new one.

All seemed to work fine, until I noticed that even if I specify correct slot for backup jobs, backupexec choose another media on its own.

This is messing up all my backups :(

For example, for mondays backup, into my tape library there is a tape 000011L4:

 

and my job is configured this way:

 

When the job finishes, unfortunatel I can see that a wrong tape was used, the one for friday full backup !!!

After that initial mess up, the tuesday backup used the monday slot, the wednesday backup used the tuesday slot .. and so on.

What's happening ?

Please help because it is really painful to have backup completely wrong!!

Thanks and best regards.

5 REPLIES 5

RahulG
Level 6
Employee

When you target a backup jobv to a pratition the backup job will , only run on the tape which is in that partition , there is no way it will write the backup job to a tape which in a different partition .

you just need to make sure the job is configured to use the correct parition and the parition as the correct tape .'

Make sure you run inventory on the slot before you run the backup job.

You may also try recreating the paritions again , before you remove the partition you need to make sure that there is no backup job pointing to a parition in your library.once the parition are created again you can point the backup jobs to the correct partition.

pkh
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP    Certified

You should not target your job to the partition listed under the device pool.  You should target it to the other one listed below it, i.e. the one in your first screenshot pointed to by the left red arrow.  See figure below, green box.

 

 

Your setup is very dangerous.  If your job needs another tape, it would not be able to get an overwriteable tape from another partition and will fail.

----------------------------------

As an aside, you are managing your tapes, rather than letting BE and the tape library manage your tapes for you.  Life would be very much easier if you follow the later option.  See my article on this subject.

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/must-mondays-backup-be-monday-tape

Fabri_Fabri
Level 4

Hi,

I am back after a long long time.

The problem is still there but today I noticed a pattern.

Last friday, due to Easter Monday, I have put backup on hold.

Today morning I changed tapes and tried to run monday backup, that should in theory use slot 1. After a while I opened the XML log file and I could see that the slot 2 was being used.
So I canceled and restarted the job. I have noticed that now slot 3 was being used. So I repeated cancel and run job until the last friday slot (5) and canceled that one too.

I expected that slot 1 will be used at that time .. but again the slot 2 was used.

So, I ejected slot 2,3,4,5, did a new inventory and ran the job ... it works now! Why it is doing this ? It is not expected !!

It seems that Backupexec tries to start job using the today slot (2, monday) and after a cancel/start the same job, it slides a slot ahead (3 and 4 and 5).

I checked everything ... (tapes for example are not write protected .. or media label match barcode ) but I cannot understand why.

Please help.

RahulG
Level 6
Employee

If you ha ve paritions created and if the ackup job is targeted to run on specific paritioon, the backup job will only use the tape in the partition set in the backup job, even if it need an overwritable tape , you need to insert it in the same slot for thebackup job to continue . 

Check if you have the job acciedently assing to the tape drive or library instead of the partition

Fabri_Fabri
Level 4

I see your point and BackupExec *should* do that .. but I can tell you that the job is correctly targeted to one  partition ... but another slot (partition) is chosen.

The logs created as soon as the job is started confirms that.

Can I probably activate some verbose log to dig deeper ?

Thanks.