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Best Practice for Multiple Drives and Multiple Jobs

Pete-L
Level 2

Hello,

Currently we have a 1x SCSI drive and 24 slot autoloader using D2D2T (duplicate jobs) but are migrating to 2x FC drives and 50 slots.  I was wondering how everyone else configured their media server for optimal performance.

 

Currently I have the following Media Rotation (per week, of which I have 4 different weeks)

MON1T1 /MON1T2 (using 5 slots)

TUE1T1/TUE1T2 (using 5 slots)

WED1T1/WED1T2 (using 5 slots)

THU1T1/THU1T2 (using 5 slots)

WK1T01/WK1T02/WK1T3/WK1T4/WK1T5 (using 10 slots)

 

Is there any special configuration that I need to ensure that the 2 tapes in the 5 slots (partitioned) get used rather than it failing as 3 out of the 5 slots are empty?  Also is there anyway to get one job to run across two drives?

Thanks,

Pete

8 REPLIES 8

Colin_Weaver
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

You cannot run one job across 2 drives, if you need this facility NetBackup provides it. (I believe)

So to use both drives have 2 jobs running at the same time.

Pete-L
Level 2

Ok thanks Colin for confirming what I expected.  Do you know why some of the jobs are failing when there are 2 tapes in slot partition 1-5 that are overwritable and have space.  Are there any limitations around the partitions and number of tapes in each partition?

Colin_Weaver
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

Hi Pete

 

 SOrry but why tapes are not used might depend on settings that you have not provided (i.e media set information) and also on the state of the media at the time of the backup (for instance say your jobs start at 21:00 and you come in the next day and one has not run, however by the time you look that following morning the tape is overwritable, does not mean it was overwritable at 21:00 when the job tried to run)

pkh
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP    Certified

If you simply partition your library, without properly setting up your media set, you are very likely to have problems like yours.  You should set up your media sets properly so that tapes are available for your jobs. 

Pete-L
Level 2

Hi, my media set is appendable & overwritable and was when the jobs started as it executed some of the jobs.

Tape 1 and 2 are blank to start with

Job1 -> Tape Device Pool

Job2 -> Tape Device Pool

Job3 -> Tape Device Pool

etc

 

Tape 1 would be approx 750GB and Tape 2 would be 1200GB (both with space) and then Job3 would try and write to Slot3 (empty) and fail even though the tapes in Slots 1 and 2 have free, appendable space.

AmolB
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

Tape 1 would be approx 750GB and Tape 2 would be 1200GB (both with space) and then Job3 would try and write to Slot3 (empty) and fail even though the tapes in Slots 1 and 2 have free, appendable space.

 

When the backup job spans over multiple tapes than 2nd tape onwards BE prompts for an

overwrite media (this is by design). BE will not append when the backup jobs spans across tapes.

pkh
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP    Certified

What is the AP of the media set that the tapes belongs to?  If it is too short, then when Job 3 starts, it will not find an appendable tape.  A tape does not only have to have free space for a job to append to it, but the append period of the tape must not have expired.

To understand the AP better, read this document

OPP and AP explanation

pkh
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP    Certified

What has tape spanning got to do with the user's problem?