How to prevent a backup job using two tapes

[Glenn_Pugh]

I have a robotic library and have a number of backup jobs scheduled for overnight. I only want to use one tape each night so that I can take it out each morning for offsite storage. The first job is set to "overwrite", all the subsequent jobs are set to "append".

Unfortunately, the append jobs will append to any available tape in the media set and so I end up with at least two tapes being used each night, sometimes three.

Is there any way I can avoid this - other than having only one tape in the media set and having to move a fresh tape into the media set each day after taking the other one out?

[Corbett_Merrill]

The way I handle this is by creating device partitions. This breaks up the tape slots into sections so that you can target not only a media set but also one or many slots in a loader. To configure partitions right click on the Library and select Configure Partitions.

Another way to accomplish this would be to set a 23 hour append time on your media set. Then the next night it couldn't append to that tape any longer.

Also, if you have your overwrite and append times set right on you media set, you don't even have to have the first job set to overwrite. You want the tape(s) to become overwritable and not appendable in time for your first job to run.

[Glenn_Pugh]

Thanks for the response. A 23 hour appendable setting may help if there is only one appendable tape. But if there are 2 different tapes in the same media set and/or slot partition, both appendable, there still does not appear to be a way of forcing all the append jobs to go to one tape. I was hoping to do this without manually checking each day that there is only one available tape to use or maybe I'll have to schedule jobs to move media to and from a vault.

[Keith_Langmead]

I think you've misunderstood what Corbett has said.

If you set a 23 hour append period as suggested to your media set, when the job starts at say 21:00, the backup selects tape 1 for the backup, and the clock starts on the append period. When the second job starts because it has been more than 23 hours since the previous nights backups ran, and append periods have expired on all the tapes EXCEPT tape 1, it can only use that tape, and so it continues through the night. The next night the backup chooses another tape for the first backup, and continues to use that one for all the backups, since the append period from the previous night has expired already.