Disk full / How to setup life media time ?

[magix]

Dear all,

Until now, I solved the support management very simply :

"Keep undefinitely - never overwrite"

because we had enough backup disk space.

But now the backups do not run anymore because of "Destination peripheral is full".

I know I should configure the support life duration, but how should I do it to be sure that need data is never overwritten ?

For example I have monthly backups. The properties of a backup job is only proposing "indefinitely" or "4 weeks", but I can't select for example 3 months.

Furthermore, even if I change that, how could I delete/modify the properties of existing support ?

Thanks a lot for any hints, suggestions, or general explanation of how to manage the supports !

P.S. I already read the documentation and followed an official Symantec course, but everything remains unclear to me !

[Ken_Putnam]

Each media set has different overwrite and append properties, so you need to set each as neccessary for your site
 

If you want monthlies saved for 3 months, then create a Monthly media set and set the OPP to 90 days and  APP to never  (I recommend all overwrite jobs for disk based backups)

if you only need your Dailies for a week, then create a Daily media set and set the OPP to 6 days OPP never

You may need to manually retire some/all of the current BKF Files in order to get this working

[magix]

Oh and a question about old supports :

• Is there a way to see when was date last appended to a media ?
  (So that I could easily delete "old" supports)

[magix]

Ok, thanks a lot for your advices...

The first problem was that I never created media sets ;)

Of course I was using the existing one called "Keep undefinitely" but with specific media sets it will be better.

Just to be sure, if I say "Keep for 90 days", will it be automatically deleted after 90 days, or deleted only if necessary ?

[Ken_Putnam]

Just to be sure, if I say "Keep for 90 days", will it be automatically deleted after 90 days, or deleted only if necessary

Sorry, forgot one important piece

Froim Tools\Options\Media Management  verify that the option to "Use overwriteable media in the Target Media set before scratch media" is selected, rather than "use scratch ..."

This way , BackupExec will reuse/overwrite the oldest BKF files in the target media set when it runs.  If none have exceeded the OPP, then BackupExec will use any expired media that it can find, if there in none, then it will create a new BKF file.

So the answer is BackupExec will not delete the existing BKF files, it will just reuse them

[Ken_Putnam]

I think the only way to do this would be to run the media set report

BUT

I recommend not using APPEND for disk based  backups.  This can cause some quirky  behavior.  I recommend that all disk based jobs use Overwrite ONLY

[magix]

Hello,

First note, it's difficult to use the correct terms because my version of BE is in French. Therefore the following terms are certainly not very precise...

Ok I tried to launch the "Backup media vs Support media" report but I don't know how to use it / understand it ?

Example of lines included in the report :

• 1 B2D000002 Full 29/10/2009 22:50:00 Backup Shares / \\atlantic.customer.ch\[ROOT] 17 767 1298,72
•     442 B2D000007 Full 27/12/2009 00:27:00 Backup Shares / \\atlantic.customer.ch\[ROOT] 34128 241363 289747,99
•     800 B2D000007 Full 26/01/2010 16:17:00 Backup Shares / \\atlantic.customer.ch\[ROOT] 34 1499 3487,08
•     863 B2D000007 Incremental 31/01/2010 01:03:00 Backup shares / \\atlantic.customer.ch\[ROOT] 35424 4027 5014,62

Difficult to know what is where because everything is mixed amongst media sets.

My backups are now full and I absolutely need to delete some, but should I delete backup medias or support medias ? I mean should I delete backups by job or by media sets ?

Thanks a lot for your help ;)

[magix]

Dear all,

Currently I'm still blocked with the above problem... And I really don't know how to solve it !

All my backups are stopped because of disk full and I don't know what to delete...

Thank you very much for any help on this !

[CraigV]

...I have escalated to support for you. Let us know if you hear back from them!

[Colin_Weaver]

The simplest option is to sort the media in the device (b2D) by allocated date and then make a decision about what your oldest date should be (along with reviewing the Overwrite Protected Until column.)

Then retire any media older than that date (make a note of each bkf name) and then delete the media in the Backup Exec console followed by using the list of names you noted to delete the media in the file system itself.

However the above idea does not take into account GRT media sets or montly and weekly media so is a very simple view and you probably need more specific advice.

Unfortunately a public forum is not really the best place for Symantec to fully review and give the required specific advice on what you might need to delete as such I strongly suggest you open a formal support case so that remote access session can be used (via Webex) to help you both with your current problem and to undersatand how to stop it happening again.

Also please be aware that to a certain extent only you can identify exactly what you can delete as only you can say whether what is on each media needs to be kept for a longer period of time.

[Ken_Putnam]

If you have been doing all overwrite jobs (my recommendation for ALL disk  based backups) all you should need to do is change the media set retention  periods, verify that the option to use recycleable media before scratch is selected and then BackupExec should overwrite/reuse existing BKF files

Of course this will not free up any space, but your backups should start running again

If you have done all append jobs, then this approach won't work, because all of the BKF files in an "append family" share the same OPP, which is reset each time one of them is closed (hence my suggestion about all overwrite jobs)