~ Need assistance in creating a backup solution ~

[BinaryPirate]

Hello all,

I have an HP SAS 8-slot robotic library using LTO5 tapes. My goal is to have full daily (including weekends) backups and have each tape devoted to one day each. I would like this due to ease of archiving tapes and finding tapes when a restore needs to be done. The 8th tape would be reserved for a weekly full that will eventually go offsite; we have a bi-weekly rotation of of weekly backups. This way, that magazines would only have to be loaded once a week and the offsite storage would not take one of my daily backups. I would also need to do a montly; this can be in place of the weekly if necessary.

Is this feasible? Should I go about this in a different way?

Tips/advice greatly appreciated.

[CraigV]

BE won't put a Monthly backup onto a Weekly tape...the tapes sit in 2 different media sets, unless you simply have 1 media set and 3 defined jobs running to this?

[BinaryPirate]

Are you saying that if it has a different media set/retention policy on said tape, BE will see this and not use it?

BE will only go lineir in the same mideia set?

[BinaryPirate]

I have media sets; Daily Full, Monthly Full, and Weekly Full.

Then I have a GFS policy deployed matching the sets.

Im good?

[CraigV · Accepted solution]

BinaryPirate: Yes.

If you want a Daily/Weekly/Monthly backup routine, then you need to consider a GFS policy...Grandfather/Father/Son.

It's simple and easy to setup. You'd create the GFS policy, which starts with the Monthly job being created. This includes your Append/OPP settings, naming your media set (or selecting a pre-existing media set), selecting partitions (if you use them in a tape autoloader/library) etc. along with naming this. You'd move on to the Weekly configuration, and then the Daily configuration.

Each is going to have its own media set. Different retention times mean this is required. No sense in having 1 media set for everything where tapes can be overwritten, and you end up losing a Monthly for instance.

Once done, select a selection list and you're ready to go.

I suspect what's happening is that you have 1 media set and are trying to retrofit a GFS backup strategy into this which won't work. A policy is easily managed & I'd recommend it. Tapes belong to media sets and are not used by others. If you have an autoloader/library, you can further segment the tapes physically by creating partitions.

Read the TNs below for further advice too...

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=HOWTO22927

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/techtip-using-backup-exec-policies-and-templates

http://astolstechblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/create-policy-based-grandfather-father.html (external article)

Thanks!

[CraigV]

...my essay below means nothing now

Post screenshots of the settings of those media sets. BE should NOT be tacking 1 type of job onto another...Are you sure that those media sets have been selected in the respective GFS backup job?

Thanks!

[BinaryPirate]

Also, will the tape be available for any media set once the overwrite protection expires? If not, how do I remedy this?

Basically once the overwrite protection expires, I would like it to available as BE wants to use it.

[CraigV]

...I got around this by creating partitions containing tapes for the Daily/Weekly/Monthly and this ensures that the various jobs can't use another media set's tapes.

But your Append/OPP settings should take care of this if you don't want to use partitions (if you can!).

Thanks!

[BinaryPirate]

I am soooo sorry! I had no idea I missed explaining this part!

I dont believe it is crossing media sets. I just didnt know how it worked. OOPS.

[CraigV]

...Haha! classic, no worries