Media rotation notification?

[Kevin_Demers]

I am using a PowerVault 124T 16 Slot Autoloader with a total allocation of 40 tapes. (15 in the autoloader at any given time w/1 cleaning cartridge) using a Grandfather scheme. Is there some mechanism I can put in place that will notify me (Daily/Weekly/Monthly, whatever) when to swap out the media freshly written to with off-line media that is ready for writing. We want to make the most effecient use of the 40 tapes we currently have.

Thank You

[priya_khire]

Hello,

Do you mean to set some sort of setting that will inform you when to overwrite the media? Have you created media sets, if yes, what is the Overwrite protection period and append period set for it?


In the Grandfather scenario, four media are used Monday through Thursday for
incremental or differential backups; another three media are used every Friday for full
backups. The remaining 12 media are used for monthly full backups and are kept off site.

The Grandfather strategy is recommended because it offers a goods media number to storage life ratio (19 media / 1 year).
It is also easy to modify if you want to incorporate more media. For example you could perform a full backup on the last Saturday of the month to archive permanently..

Additonally refer to:

http://support.veritas.com/docs/192265
http://support.veritas.com/docs/237374

In c ase you need any other info on this case, do write us back.

[Kevin_Demers]

First to answer your questions, we are looking to setup three media sets in our grandfather scheme: Daily, Weekly, Monthly.
DAILY (Monday - Thursday) - 4 day append : 2-day overwrite protection

WEEKLY (Friday 1-Friday 5) - 29 day append : 5-day overwrite protection
(Another question here: I'm almost SURE we're not setting this right, we want the last five Fridays, should we be creating media sets for each friday or should I change the settings for this scheme?)

MONTHLY (Taken Offsite monthly) - 1 day append : 11-Month overwrite protection
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What I'm interested in is we will have 40 tapes allocated to the backup rotation with the robot-library having 15 in it's slots at any given time. Is there a mechanism/report that will prompt me to cycle the media that is not in the robot-library into the library and take the most recently written media out?

Our hope is to make the best use of the full 40 tapes we have allocated with the software notifying us when to rotate the media.

Thank You,
Kevin

[Ken_Putnam]

I'd set the Daily OPP to 6 days and OPP to none, if you use a separate tape each night

I'd set the Weekly OPP to 34 days and APP to none, again if you use a separate tape each Friday


AFAIK, there is no Media Rotation report, you have to track that yourself. I make it part of my morning routine to rotate tapes as needed, after I check the status of the overnight jobs

[Kevin_Demers]

Thank you very much,

On the OPP & APP settings, where we want to maintain one set of physical tapes for the whole week's media set (Monday thru Thursday, no separate tapes for each night), are we right in assuming the previous settings?

[Ken_Putnam]

To stack all the DIFFS on one tape (starting a new tape on Sat) I'd use an append of 6 days and OPP of 28 days

But if that tape fails, you lose a weeks worth of backups.