cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Need help with B2D Overwrite/Append Period

dotty
Level 3
Partner Accredited

Can someone help explain the OOP/Append period to me?  I've watched a couple videos and read the manual but I can't quite get my head wrapped around it.  Basically, each of our servers have 2 drives, 1 used for the system, and 1 used for data.  Here's the end goal

System Drive:

Full backup every Friday, with a differential Mon-Thursday.  I want the Differential to overwrite itself every day.  Each full backup should be retained for 6 weeks.

Data Drive:

Full backup every Friday, with incrementals Mon-Thursday.  I want the incrementals to overwrite itself every week.  So week 1 monday's incremental would be overwritten by week 2 monday's incremental and so forth.  The full backup should be retained for 2 weeks.

 

So, from what I gathered so far, I created:

2 b2d "device", 1 for the system, and 1 for the data.

4 Media Sets:

System Full:

6 weeks overwrite protection

0 Append

System Differential:

1 day overwrite protection

0 Append

Data Full:

2 weeks overwrite protection

0 Append

Data Incrementals:

1 week overwrite protection

6 days Append

 

Is that right? If not, where did I go wrong?

7 REPLIES 7

pkh
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP    Certified

Good job! You are almost there.  For your Data Incrementals, you should set the OPP to 6 days and the AP to 0.  OPP (and AP) is calculated from the time the job finishes.  Let's say your job daily at 10 p.m. and takes 1 hour to complete.  This means that your Monday's data will only be overwriteable at 11 p.m. the following Monday.  This means that when your Monday job runs, it will still not be overwriteable.  There is no need to append the data.

Likewise, with your other OPP, you need to reduce the period slightly so that they will become overwriteable when the next job starts.  For example, your System Differentials should have an OPP of say 20 hours instead of 1 day.

Make sure that in all your jobs, specify that they Overwrite the media.

RahulG
Level 6
Employee

You have got all the configuration correct I beleive . When you running a bakup job to backup to disk folder its not a good idea to append ,instead set the backup job to overwrite everytime (incase if the job is set to append it will try to append the the last bkf file created by the previous job , and it would be difficult to manage the media .

  For eg if you want the monday backup to be overwritten every monday ..the opp= 6 days and app 0 .. Similary if you want for 2 weeks . opp 13 days and app 0 days .

IF you are running incremntal job on the same media thorugh out the week and then you want to protect it for another week . you can have app as 6days and app = 7 days .

refer the information below to get a better understanding about the overwrite and append period ..

Overwrite protection period is the amount of time specified in hours, days, weeks, or years to keep a piece of media from being overwritten. While the default Overwrite protection period for a media set is Infinite - Don't Allow Overwrite, the Overwrite protection period for the media set can be changed by the user. If the Overwrite protection period is set to four weeks for example, the media will be protected from being overwritten for four weeks. After the four weeks are over, the media becomes "recyclable" and can be overwritten. The Overwrite protection period starts at the end of each job run, not the beginning. It is lengthened each time a media is modified.

Append period is the amount of time specified in hours, days, weeks, or years, that data may be added (appended) to media. While the default Append period for a media set is Infinite - Allow Append, the Append period for the media set can be changed by the user. If the Append period is set to four weeks for example, the media can be appended to for the next four weeks. After the four weeks are over, the media can no longer be appended to. Appending jobs will add to the Overwrite protection period; append adheres to the first job run on tape. The Append period starts at the time that a media is first allocated to a media set.

The overwrite and append periods can be configured from the Media tab within Backup Exec (tm).
Highlight and right-click on any media set name and select Properties



In addition, the level of media overwrite protection will affect the overwrite and append values as follows:

Full - protect allocated and imported media
The job's search for a tape under the Full level is unique in that imported tapes as well as media with time left in their Overwrite Protection Period are protected from overwrite.

Partial - protect only allocated media
The search for a tape under the Partial level is identical to that for the Full option, except only media with time left in their Overwrite Protection Period are protected from overwrite. For the level called Partial, by default, Backup Exec will perform the following steps to find media available for overwrite.

1. Backup Exec first searches "Scratch Media" for media that can be overwritten

2. If no tape is available in "Scratch Media," the job will examine the recyclable (expired) tapes in the User Media Set targeted by the job

3. If no tape is available in the User Media Set targeted by the job, Backup Exec will examine the "recyclable" (expired) tapes in all User Media Sets other than the one targeted by the job.

4. If no tape is available there, the job will examine tapes in the imported media set. Backup Exec can be configured to prompt before it uses an imported tape.

5. If no tape is available, Backup Exec will prompt for a tape for the job.

None
For the media overwrite protection level called None, no tapes are protected against overwrite.
Warning: An overwrite protection level of None can be dangerous. If None is chosen, any tape in the system can be overwritten.


Backup Exec 9.x, 10.x and 11.x for Windows Servers:
Full, Partial, or None (media overwrite protection) can be configured under the Tools | Options | Media Management tab
 

pkh
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP    Certified

@rahulg - If you are going to quote wholesale from document

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH5459&actp=search&viewlocale=en_US...

it would be better to direct the user to this document.  Otherwise, people might think that you are plagarising.

RahulG
Level 6
Employee

Thanks for the advice pkh. The link which I had was old link and i was not able to get the new link, I thought it might have expired so just posted the content which I had in my documentation .

dotty
Level 3
Partner Accredited

Thanks for the help guys. 

@phk,

If the job is set to overwrite, does it create a new backup when the "media" is in the OOP or will it overwrite anyways?  Also, am I correct in saying that if the data incremental append is set to 0, a new backup file will be created each day instead of having 1 file for the week? 

That brings me to another question, with b2d, a .b2k file is created.  Are these the backups itself or are the backup stored within these .b2k files? Thanks.

RahulG
Level 6
Employee

When you configure a backup to disk folder , you configure the max size of the backup to disk folder for eg if it is set to 4gb which is by default . if you run a backup of 22 gb it would create 6 bkf file 5 of 4 gb and one of 2 Gb. So next time if you run a append job it going to append to the last bkf file which was of 2 Gb  and if you run a overwrite backup job , it would look for overwritable bkf file or create a new one based on the setting you have under tool--Option--Media mangement --

So as per you question "If the job is set to overwrite, does it create a new backup when the "media" is in the OOP or will it overwrite anyways?  "  If the seting under  tool--Option--Media mangement --is setto overwrite scratch media 1st ..it will keep on creating new bkf file until the drive is full and once the drive is full it will overwrite the media whoes opp is over. Incase if the setting is set to overwrite recyclable media 1st then it will look for any recyclable media in the backup to disk location ,incase if it find non then it would create a new Bkf file ..

Also for you second question "Also, am I correct in saying that if the data incremental append is set to 0, a new backup file will be created each day instead of having 1 file for the week? " If the App is set to zero the media file create ie .bkf will not allow to append and can be only overwritten . Even if the backup job is set to append to media overwrtie if no appendable media...it is going to create new .bkf file as the media set property does not allow append .

So All the data which you backup is in the bkf files .. and to restore you need to make sure you have the bkf files . You can copy this bkf file to another backup to disk location ,run catalog and restore from them ..

pkh
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP    Certified

Also note that when you append to a media the OPP is re-calculated from the end of the appending job.  For example, your Monday job overwrites a new media and the OPP ends next Monday (assume OPP = 1 week).  When your Tuesday job appends to the same media, the OPP is reset to next Tuesday.