Getting tapes to overwrite when there is not enough space to finish the back up.

[AlbanyBusStuden]

Forgive me if something similar has been posted.  We use a set of 5 tapes one for each business day the most recent tape is taken offsite each day.  The trouble is when a tape for example Tuesday does not have enough space to finish the back up the program asks us to remove that tape and insert another.  We end up usually putting in Wednesday in that situation.  The other big problem this causes is that we have to do the swap in the morning and the backup isn't complete until 10am or so.  We like to come in exchange tapes and get the new tape out of the building. 

So what I'm looking for is a way to get backup exec to recognize that it can't fit what it needs to on the current tape and to start overwriting instead of making us span 2 tapes.

Your help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Jesse

[Kevin_Cotreau]

I don't think it will do what you want it to do, but there are a number of ways to handle this:

First, obviously you could buy new hardware and tapes that the data will all fit. I will assume this option is not on your list.

Second, because they are cheap, you could buy a USB drive and set up a B2D (hint: make it non-removable even though you can technically remove it). Do your full backups to this tape weekly on Saturday night. Then do incremental backups during the week and do a full data-only backup on Friday's tape to take off-site weekly.

Third, you can adjust what you are backing up during the week to only include data. You can combine this with option 2.

[AlbanyBusStuden]

Thank you for the response and the suggestions.  Unfortunately this is not an issue of too much backup for too little tape.  The tapes are much larger than the backup.  But currently the system is set up where each week it adds the new backup to the end of the others.  This works well until the tapes are full enough that there is not enough room for a new backup. That is when we have the problem with having to span two tapes.  They are all set to be appendable and overwritable.  We want them to append until they don't have enough room then overwrite themselves rather than making us span two tapes. 

Hopefully this clears up what we're asking.

Thanks again for your response.

Jesse

[Kevin_Cotreau · Accepted solution]

Unfortunately? You are very fortunate. It is so much easier when you are not struggling for room.

If I understand your question correctly, the solution to your clarification requires a little math and then a settings change. (If you post back for any reason, please state what kind of tapes and how big the backups are.) If your tape is an LTO3 tape (400 native/800 compressed), you first need to figure out how much data the tape is holding compressed. You can do that in Media and clicking on a full tape (you will see that stats to the right I think. I use 12.5, which does, and I don't remember that exactly on 10d). Next you need to determine how much data you backup during a certain period.

Example: So let's say that I have an LTO3 tape that holds 700GB compressed (I actually get about 760GB per tape, but this will vary, and you are not likely to get 800 ever as in this example) and I backup 70GB/night. Clearly I can fit 10 nights on that one tape, BUT.... I would not do that because what happens when the backups grow to 75GB/night? Well you will end up with your current problem for the last day of that rotation eventually as your data grows. Be reasonable, and say you will store 8 days on that one tape.

Next you go to your media set for these tapes, and set the overwrite protection to 0 and append period for 8 days. It will append for 8 days, and on the 9th, it will start again.

I hope this is what you are asking.

[AlbanyBusStuden]

Thank you so much.  That is exactly what I was looking for.  They are DLT VS1 Tapes in a DLT V4 Drive.  They hold 160/320.  I can crunch the numbers so I'll do that and give this a try.  Thanks

Jesse