Export written tapes after multiple backup jobs?

[AllenK]

Here's the scenario:

Running BackupExec 2012.  Quantum Scalar i40 library with mailslots set up.  Roughly 40 backup jobs per night to tape.  I'm trying to figure out how to export the media that has been written to the mail slot after the last job runs.  Do I just need to schedule an export job to run after the last backup completes, or will that export all the media in the library?  The jobs usually span a couple of tapes(1-2 for incrementals, 3-4 for the full backups).

[Jaydeep_S]

You need to actually select the 'eject the media after job complete' option on the last job.

[AllenK]

Will that get all the media?  Lets say jobs 1-20 use tapes 1&2, and jobs 21-40 use tapes 3&4.  If I select eject media on job 40, will get get tapes 1&2?

[pkh]

This option is only for stand-alone tape drives. It has no effect o on a tape library

[pkh · Accepted solution]

You need to have an export stage after each job. In your case, exporting tapes will be useless. You have more tapes to export than mailslots. After the mailslots are filled and with nobody to remove them your other export jobs will fail

[AllenK]

So there's no method to chain the backup jobs and then export the tape?

[pkh]

When you add a export stage to your backup jobs, the export job is chained to the backup job.  If you want to chain backup jobs, see my article below

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/use-bemcli-chain-jobs

You got to understand what happens when you export a tape.  Suppose you have 1 mailslot and you export 3 tapes.  The first tape would be placed in the mailslot and BE will prompt you to remove the tape from the mailslot.  When you remove the tape and respond to the alert, BE will place the next tape in the mailslot and issue another alert to ask you to remove the tape from the mailslot.  This process continues until all the tapes are exported.  Presumably your backups occur at night when there is nobody around to remove the tapes.  When there is no response for the media removal alert, the export job will fail and all subsequent export jobs will also fail because the mailslot is occupied.  Unless you have someone to remove the the tapes from the mailslot during the time when the media removal alert is issued, there is no point in you doing tape exports because you definitely do not have more mailslots than the number of tapes to be exported.  There is no way to delay the export until the mailslots are cleared.

[Robert_Ferguson]

Hi,

Similar to AllenK,  I need to export tapes as well to I/O slots in my library.  I have 12 I/O Slots. I have figured how to chain jobs, I can find what media was written to, but nothing I've found will tell me what slots they live in to call Get-BERoboticLibraryDevice | Get-BERoboticLibrarySlot -SlotNumber X,Y,Z | Submit-BEExportMediaJob.  If, somehow I can find what slots X,Y, and Z, are from the get-mediaset "Daily Tape", I'm golden.  If you run Get-BEMediaSet -Name "Whateveryourmediasetnameis"  you can get all the tape barcodes or what you've named the tapes.  Can you help me getting the slot numbers the tapes live in? 

Thanks,

Robert