Can Backup Exec use a different media pool for each host?

[rdwhitti]

Hi, I have a customer that wants to completely (or almost) control hist media for each host. He currently uses stand alone drives and manually loads the media that he wants to use for each backup according to the host and the type of backup (daily, weekly, etc.). Is there a way to still do this using Backup exec and a library? Can he designate a pool of media to be used per host and a media or subset of a pool to be used for each type of backup? I realize that this is contrary to the automatic management of media that Backup Exec is designed to do, but is it possible?

[Ken_Putnam · Accepted solution]

Certainly

Create a media set for each host and create a separate job for that host pointed at that media set, and from Tools\Options\Media Media Management verify that the option to "Use overwriteable media in the target media set before scratch media" is selected
 

However

if you just point the jobs at the library, and no media in the appropriate pool are available, Backup Exec will use media from any other media set that are overwriteable

if you want to absolutely guarantee that jobs for HostA will only be written to Media in the HostA media set, you need to partition the library and point each job to the appropriate partition
 

One thing you do need to watch for with partitions:

If there is no available tape in a partition, the job will stop, prompt for a tape, and eventually time out, even if there are available tapes in other partitions

See

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH58508

How to make Backup Exec (BE) select the same set of media/tape(s) for scheduled backup job(s)?

http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO73442

About robotic library partitions

http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO11862

Creating robotic library partitions

[rdwhitti]

Ken,

Thank you so very much for your quick and knowledgeable answer! This is exactly what I need. It sounds like the combination of library partitions and designated media sets is a complete solution for this customer. I of course knew that certain libraries implemented logical partitioning, but I did not know that Backup Exec implements a level of software partitioning without requiring the library itself to support the feature.

Thanks again for your help.