Please Help

[ZGoggins]

I had a backup run and under the job log for that backup it shows me what media was used to run and that was only 1 tape. Now under my devices it shows 2 tapes were used but obviously only 1 was used for the backup. Is there a way to see what information is on each tape in the device tab?

[SuperBrain]

Yes, you can right-click on the Tape Label and select Restore Now

This will open the restore job selection view, with the Tape Label expanded, under which you can further expand the backup sets (which will be listed date wise) and selections to see what that tape contains.

Basically identify the Data and Time at which your last backup ran and try to match it with the backup set's date and time shown in the restore selection.

[ZGoggins]

Well of course the one tape that I am looking for is not on there ha. It does say the media was not found in the catalogs and I must catalog the media first. What does that mean and what does that do?

[SuperBrain]

How long back did this backup run? 

Catalog is a database that Backup Exec needs to maintain in order to keep a track of everything that gets backed up and to make sure whatever gets backed up, is available to restore.

In short, whatever you see in the Restore Selections comes from Catalogs.

If it says you must catalog the media first, thn please run a Catalog job by right-clicking on that media label and wait for it to complete successfully and check again.

[ZGoggins]

The backup itself ran for an hour. But the tape that the backup used is available for restore, its this other tape that says it was used but never was that I am curious about.

[SuperBrain]

Ok, im a little confused!

Where do you see that the tape was used?

and how do you know it was never used?

[ZGoggins]

I see that the tape was used under the device tap. I know that it was used because every night before I leave work all of the tapes are overwriteable that way I dont run into any issues with backups not being able to run because of tape issues. Under the device tab there are now 2 tapes that are overwrite protected and under the backup job that just ran it only shows 1 tape being used. So where does this other tape come from and why is it now overwrite protected when the backup job never used it?

[SuperBrain]

If you are trying to identify if that other tape was used by any jobs, best way to go about that would be looking through your Job Histroy.

Check the date and time when that tape was assigned to the media set it currently sits in and compare that date and time stamp with the job logs in Job history section.

Open the job log (if identified) and check under Device information to see if it shows that same media label in the Job log/history

[ZGoggins]

I have found that it belongs to a backup job that failed. The way it is set up is everyday at 5:30pm one backup job runs and another at 8:55pm. The problem last night was the one that runs at 5:30pm stayed on queued the entire night and it supposedly used that 1 tape. Could this mean that the tape is bad because the backup job didnt run?

[SuperBrain]

Not necessarily.

First we must identify why that job stayed on queued state the entier night. Please check the Alerts tab as i suspect there was a particular device/media alert which may have popped up and since there was no one to acknowledge it at night time, the job may have been waiting in queued state for someone to respond to that alert.

Once we identify the reason why it was in queued state, it'l be easy to know the answers you're trying to find.

[ZGoggins]

Thats what i figured so i checked it out this morning but the only things that occur are at 4am and it is maintenance of application databases on server has started and then a summary. There is nothing that hints at the reason why that was queued all night

[SuperBrain]

There's nothing i can think of other than

1. Media unavailability or

2. Un-responded alert

due to which any job may remain in queued state.

[ZGoggins]

Could this be a bad tape then?

[SuperBrain]

Cant say! a tape being set to overwrite protected (in other words being assigned to a media set to acquire its overwrite protection period and append period properties) does not mean it is a bad tape!

I'm not even saying it cannot be a bad tape, are there any hard/soft read/write errors reported in tape properties? If yes, what are the numbers?

[ZGoggins]

How do I get the tape properties? It just seems very wierd that it would just sit in queued with no alerts or nothing.

[SuperBrain]

This technote should guide you - http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH7363

[ZGoggins]

Thanks. The tape has 5 soft write and 8 soft read errors.