Juggling media, auto loader style BackupExec 10d

[SaintAce]

Hi,

I don't know if anyone can help.
I am having trouble wrapping my head around the logic of media overwriting in regards to achieving a particular aim.

Our daily backups have just started to span more than one tape. We have an autoloader so that is good.

The setup we would like to achieve is the following.
Currently there is a tape a day for each day of the week on a two week cycle.
For various logistic reasons we would like to have one "overflow" tape per week set.
However the confusion arises when we try to get the "overflow" tape to retain all of the weeks backups and not just overwrite the previous days.

At the end of each week we would like six tapes, with the overflow tape containing data from all six days to allow roll backs to be made in necessary.

Is this possible?
I cannot seem to get Backup Exec to do things I want them to.

Any help will be most gratefully received.

[Nimish_Patel · Accepted solution]

It is not possible as you can not tell Backup exec, which tape to take first and once filled, which tape to take to put the remaining data.

[SaintAce]

Thank you for the speedy response.

Can a backup take tapes from more than one media set?

So if I were to set the overwrite protection for one set to be longer than a week and allow it to append I could put my "overflow" tape in this set
Then have a main media set with overwrite allowed.

Is that possible?

Do any later versions of the software allow /tape overwrite options?

Many thanks

[Nimish_Patel]

Even if you create another media set for your overflow tape, in the backup job, backup exec allows you to select only one media set.  Thus it will not be possible for Backup Exec to work with two different tapes in two different media set.

No other version of Backup Exec has the feature that you are looking for.


If this answers your query, please mark it as solved.

[Ken_Putnam]

On top of the other responses, be aware that when BackupExec continues a job on a second tape, it wil only overwrite.  that is all data currently on that tape will be overwritten.  Append only applies to the first tape used in a Backup Job