I need some assistance with veritas backup Exec

[Steven_Balderra]

hello,

I am sadly writing here because of an issue we are having with veritas backup Exec ver. 10.0. So far whats happening, everything has been installed already, and veritas of course successfully recognizes that we have 2 tape drives, we are using IBM tape drives, veritas also recognizes our network layout and servers, so we already successfully made jobs to back up each server each week with a full and thoughout the week differential and incremental. The problem started 2 weeks ago, when for some reason, out of no where, looking under job monitor in the top tab section where it says "current jobs - 33 items" meaning 33 jobs assigned or made, within current job list, right before it or before it starts the first backup for the week whether its incremental, differential or full, it says under job status, READy; NO IDLE DEVICES ARE AVALIABLE. however when I look at our devices under the tab "DEVICES" it shows our 2 tape drives under all devies including our servers as folders, but the tape drives shows as tape icons. so it recognizes it, but it shows that error. what can we do to fix this? i tried restarting the server, tried going into job monitor, then top menu click on tools then stop all jobs, and restarted them, but nothing, please help. thank you

[Andrew_Armstron]

Are the tape drives enabled? (Devices tab, right-click on the drive... "Enabled" should be checked)

Also, what sort of media retention policy are you using?

[Steven_Balderra]

I have checked what you said, yes they have been enabled, it has a Check next to it. anything else, thanks for the heads up but still not working, still shows the same error or ready: no devices idle...

[Andrew_Armstron]

What about the media retention policy? What sort of retention time do you have set up for the tape media?

[Steven_Balderra]

I am not quite sure if I can provide that information, due to I dont know how to look up if I have any retention period or policy already in place. Can you walk me through on finding out if I do have a retention policy set up? and also is this vital of having a retention policy?

thanks andrew for your help

[Steven_Balderra]

also, if you find it more convenient, i can email you an image of what the problem looks like, giving you a visual of the situation that may help out to determine the problem, just if you can supply an email and i will email you a visual using paint.

thanks again andrew for your help

[Andrew_Armstron]

OK...
first of all, I need to know what media overwrite protection level you have set. (Tools...options...Media Management... look at the top field. Is it set to full, partial, or none?)

secondly, go to the Media tab, find the Media Set you are working with, right-click it and go to properties. What are the overwrite and append periods?

[Steven_Balderra]

The Media Overwrite protection level we have set to is Partial - protect only allocated media, also below it, we check the box that says: prompt before overwriting imported media.

ok for the media set, i looked up our exchange server since thats the one its backing the data from and backing it to tapes, which is also the one where it always stops when then it shows that error. I look at it through media set, then right click exchange, the overwrite protected says its overwritable, and also the appendable until... it says not appendable, also when i right click and go into properties, i look down the little box that appears and in the media set periods... it says "overwrite protection periods: 5 days, append period 12 hours. when i look in all the others, like off sie, weekly etc, they say 5 days and append period 12 hours, or like 1 week 1 hour etc. does that help?

[Steven_Balderra]

Hey andrew, I have some information, this may help, when I performed test job on that specific job that was giving that error, it gave me this error code including the problem and what happened:

Media Capacity CheckDevice : IBM 1Online append capacity : 274,378 MBOnline overwrite capacity: 0.000 MBTotal append capacity : 274,378 MBTotal overwrite capacity : 18,310,512 MBCapacity check status : FailedDevice : IBM 2Online append capacity : 274,378 MBOnline overwrite capacity: 0.000 MBTotal append capacity : 274,378 MBTotal overwrite capacity : 18,310,512 MBCapacity check status : FailedMiscellaneous : Warning: Unable to reasonably detect which device this job will run to. Different possible outcomes depending on which device this job runs to. Please target a specific device to avoid this conflict.

What i think this tells me, is that I have the wrong destination or something, or does it mean something else, if so, what then? and how can i resolve this, I hope this resolves the situation because not only this job is giving issues but another one with the same error as well the error of course is "READY: no idle devices are available". anyone else can help? please tell me how also if you can thanks

[Andrew_Armstron]

What happens if you try running a test of just the exchange server? (if that is the one that is failing)

Also, check to see if the failing backup is set to run as an overwrite job or an append job... if it is an append job and the job runs more than 12 hours since the last job to the same tape has finished, there will be no append. (per the overwrite/append settings you gave me lin a previous post)