Disk to Tape Jobs Failing

[BackupNovice]

We have a backup server with a single slot tape device. We recently installed BackupExec 2010 R3 on the server. I have recreated all of my backups as duplicate backups. All of the Disk to Disk jobs run successfully. My problem is the Disk to Tape jobs. I read in another post that if you want to write multiple jobs to one tae, the first job needs to be set to overwrite, the other jobs are set to append to media, terminate job if no appendable media is available.

The first job runs successfully overwriting the media. All of the other jobs fail with the following message: No appendable media could be mounted. V-79-57344-33037 - Error - Mount Failed. Physical Volume Library Media Mount Failed.

I have tried setting the option to Append to media, overwrite if no appendable media is available. Which runs successfully, but it overwrites the previous backup. So all jobs could run successfully, if I only wanted to keep the last job.

Does someone have an idea of what I might be doing wrong? When the first overwrite job finishes, overwrite protection on the tape states it is overwritable and appendable until is set to Inifinite.

Thank you in advance for any help that can be provided.

[Jaydeep_S · Accepted solution]

What it the media set that is used on the backup duplicate backup. If you want all the jobs to go to the same media then the same Media Set needs to be used on all the duplicate jobs. You can adjust the Media Set properties like Append Period, Overwrite Protection period or even create a new media set from Storage -> Media Set

On the Top Left click on the Backup Exec icon -> backup exec settings -> Storage. Make sure that the Media Overwrite Protection level is set to atleast partial and not None.

[AmolB]

To come around this issue you need to set proper overwrite & append period for duplicate job media set.

Overwrite protection period should be sufficient enough so that the next immediate job does not 

overwirte the previous job and append period should be such that the next job could append to the 

media used by the previous backup.

EDIT.

[BackupNovice]

The media sets that I have the Disk to Disk data stored in are set to the following: Overwrite protection period 4 hours and Append period is set to Infinite - allow append. The first backup job is set to overwrite thye media. The jobs that come after are set to append to media, or terminate if no appendable media is available.

First job runs successfully, second job terminates. If append is set to infinite allow, why would the seond job terminate?

A side question, On the Disk to Tape Settings window, device is set to the tape drive. Does the media set need to be the data I am trying to backup? Or does it need to be a generic media set that is used for the tape device to set the append ad overwrite settings?

Let me know.

Thanks again for the replies, they are appreciated.

[pkh]

For some common reasons why your append job fails, read my article below, especially the part about job overlap.

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/why-my-job-not-appending-data-my-tapes

[BackupNovice]

I realized, after reading all of the replies, that to write to the same tape, and be able to append to that tape, I needed to create a media set for that media. That way, you can set the overwrite and append properly and it will work. If you try to use two different media sets, as I was doing, it will write once, then not append because you are using a different media set. I hope this answer will help people in the future because it was something I really struggled with.

Thank you again for all who replied, you helped me greatly.