OPP Protection

[zoetaite]

Hello,

   I have created a number of media sets and set the OPP to 14 days (2 weeks). Everything was working fine, but all of sudden the data appears to be expiring. The .BKF files are turning "blue" in the media set (if that makes sense), but aren't being removed from the media set. I still have data going back to August 3rd. If I look in my B2D folders that data still resides there as well. How do I make sure the data is properly expering and the media is being re-used as "scratch".

I don't know if something changed under the "media management" settings?!?

Any help would be appreicated.

ZT
 

[pkh]

When a media turned blue, this means that they have become overwriteable or reusable.  Overwriteable files are not physically removed by BE.  To remove such a file you got to associate it with the Expired Media Set, delete it from BE and then physically delete it.

Becoming overwriteable is perfectly normal.  To check whether they are becoming overwriteable on schedule, go to the media tab and click on the media set.  Scroll to the right.  For each of the BKF files that have turned blue (overwriteable), check their allocate date which is the date that they are last used.  In your case, if the file's allocate date is more than 14 days ago, then being overwriteable is as expected.

If you want the overwriteable bkf files to be re-used, make sure you have set the following.



 

[zoetaite]

PKH,

   Thanx for the quick response. I did a quick check and I had those settings checked in "Media Management". I guess my big concern is data that is expiring in the 14 days OPP is just sitting there still using disk space. If I look at some of the .BKF files they are using up GB's of data and go back to 8/6. Once they become re-usable shound't BE reclaim this storage?

ZT

[Ben_L_]

ZT,

Just because the media is reusable doesn't mean that it will automatically be deleted or reclaimed.  This just means that the BKF files are able to be overwriten by another backup job.  Verify that your backup job is set to overwrite and check the setting that PKH posted previously.  As jobs run they will overwrite the data on an as needed basis, i.e. if you have 10 BKF files that can be overwritten, but the backup job only needs to use 5, it will only overwrite the 5 that it needs and the other 5 will be overwritten by another job later on.

[zoetaite]

Ben,

  Then what is the point of OPP? If needed I could go back and restore data from August 5th even though I set OPP to 2 weeks. In reading the BE manual it made it sound that if you set OPP to 5 days you would be only able to restore data within that time frame.

Everything is working, but I thought it would just expire the data then re-use the .BKF file as a new scratch. I came from a Tivoli background where this was the behaviour.

I just want to make sure I have enough data allocted on my NAS for my backups.

ZT

[Ben_L_]

If you needed to restore data from August 5th, then you would need a longer OPP then 2 weeks.   From todays date if you wanted to restore from August 5th you would have to have set an OPP of atleast 25 days.  The OPP protects the data for as long as the OPP is set for, so if you ran a backup on August 5th that data would be protected until August 19th.  It would become overwritable on August 20th.

[zoetaite]

OK. maybe I am missing something in my configuration. I created a media set and set the OPP to 14 days (2 weeks). If I look at the media set and look at the backups that ran early this mornig here is the information provided:

Allocated date = 8/30
Overwrite Protection until = 9/13

I just went into my 'restore' job and I am able to see data that is allocated on 8/6. Within the media set it is 'blue', but I was able to restore it - which doesn't make sense to me?!?

Sorry for the confusion.

ZT

[Ben_L_]

If you're still able to see and restore data from 8/6 then this just means that the data has not been overwritten yet.  This is fairly normal to see in any media configuration.  With an OPP set to 14 days that just means that it is available to be overwritten after 14 days.  It does not mean that it will be automaticaly overwritten.  If you change the setting the PHK mentioned the Backup Exec will look for overwritable media first when a backup job runs, if it can't find any then it will look for or create new bkf files for the backup job.  This technote goes into great detail about how media sets works.  It may be worth the read. http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/192265.htm