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Need guidance about Overwrite Protection & Appendable until.

Dipesh
Level 3

I have been using LTO5 Tape Library with BackupExec 2014.  I have defined all of my backup jobs with selective slot numbers of library.  For one of my library lot, I backup 2 different servers.  One has data of approx 300 GB and another has approx 70 GB.  I have defined my backup jobs with - "Append to media, overwrite if no appendable media found", and media set defined as - Appendable infinite / Overwrite protection 6 days.  There are 6 tapes in this media set and I use it to backup each on weekdays, i.e. one tape of Monday, 2nd tape of Tuesday and so on.  BackupExec has been configured for pre-scan of backup jobs.

Now, my tape has approx 150 GB of available space, so when first server's backup runs, it finds this media as appendable, and so backup starts appending to the media, but after 150 GB data written, it waits for another appendable another tape.  As all backup jobs run during night hours, due to this job, all other jobs remain stuck in queue.

Although, I need only last backup on the tape, I though it might be useful if there are older backups available on tape.  But when the tape is full, BE is free to overwrite those old backups. Please guide me about defining overwrite protection, and append protection for such media set. 

~Dipesh

 

2 REPLIES 2

CraigV
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited

Check the TN below for more information:

https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.TECH5459

Also, BE cannot selectively overwrite data on a tape. The entire tape is overwritten, not just sections of it.

pkh
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP    Certified

BE can only append to the first tape.  For the 2nd and subsequent tapes, it will need an overwritable tape, so make sure you have sufficient overwritable tapes BEFORE the start of your job.  Note that does not append to a tape and then write to the front of the tape.  To use the maximum capacity of the tape, you need to overwrite the tape.