Prepare tapes for Daily Incremental & Weekly Backup

[bickyz]

Hi I have HP Autoloader that takes 4 tapes on left slot and 4 on right.

I want to setup a
Daily incremental backup from Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
and
Weekly backup on Friday

I have 4 tapes for daily incremental; labelled each one as Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and are in autoloader left slot.
I have another 12 Tapes and I want to use it for:
Week 1 (labelled Tape Week 1A & Tape Week 1B)
Week 2 (labelled Tape Week 2A & Tape Week 2B)
Week 3 (labelled Tape Week 4A & Tape Week 3B)
Month 1 (labelled Tape Month 1A & Tape Month 1A)
Month 2 (labelled Tape Month 2A & Tape Month 2A)
Month 3 (labelled Tape Month 3A & Tape Month 3A)

So this is what I want to achieve:
Daily incremental Backup on Tapes Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu then
Full Backup on Tape Week 1A & B then

Daily incremental Backup will over write on Tapes Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu then
Full Backup on Tape Week 2A & B then

Daily incremental Backup will over write on Tapes Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu then
Full Backup on Tape Week 3A & B then

Daily incremental Backup will over write on Tapes Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu then
Full Backup on Tape Month 1A & B then

Daily incremental Backup will over write on Tapes Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu then
Full Backup on Tape Week 1A & B which will be over-written then

so on
daily - weekly 2 which will be over-written
daily - weekly 3 which will be over-written
daily - monthly 2

daily - weekly 1 which will be over-written
daily - weekly 2 which will be over-written
daily - weekly 3 which will be over-written
daily - monthly 3

daily - weekly 1 which will be over-written
daily - weekly 2 which will be over-written
daily - weekly 3 which will be over-written
daily - monthly 1 which will be over-written
.....so on

What do I need to do to setup something like this.
And the tapes I have are used ones, is there anything I need to look into before using these tapes.

Also is it possible that Daily incremental are done one their own tapes i.e. monday's backup on monday tape, tuesday on tuesday tape, wednesday on wednesday tape.

Help will be much appreciated. Thank you.

[NeerThadarai]

I will try to clarify few things on this.

-  You need to first calculate what would be the amount of data that you would backup in a FULL Weekly/Monthly backups and how many tapes will be able to accomodate that amount of data?

-. For Daily differential i don't think there is need for 4 tapes, you can have append job on 1 or 2 tapes at the max which anyways you are planning to rotate/overwrite the next week.

-. As you have two left and right partitions with 4 slots each which will have 8 tapes in total for the usage.

-. You can create logical partitions within backup exec for the library and have 2-3 tapes assigned to one partition on which you will target your daily differential backups and for the FULL weekly you can have around 3 tapes (I hope that would hold all your weekly data backup) and Monthly you can create another partition which can hold the rest of the tapes for your MONTHLY backups

- You have to make sure you have a proper Media Set create with appropriate Append Period and Overwrite Period

e.g.,

As your differential will Append the data from Monday - Thursday you can create Differential Media Set with Append Period (AP) 4 days and Overwrite Protection (OP) as 2 days so that after 6 days of protection on the 7th day it can be overwritten/reused.

Similarly you can create Weekly Media Set as per your requirement so that the tape can be protected data for 6 days or 13days and the same goes for Monthly

Hope this helps a bit

[Kiran_Bandi]

Create three media sets for daily, weekly and monthly backups. As you want each days backup to be written on seperate media choose None Append. OPP for daily backups 7 days, for Weekly backups 29 days (for 1 month retension), for monthly backups 4 months (set OPP depending upon required retensions).

As you have less number of slots, i believe partitioning is not an option to go with. Assign the tapes manually to the media sets. Assign monday tapes to daily media set before running differential on monday and do the same on remaining days and for weekly backups also. 

Set the media management setting to "Overwrite recyclable media in the target media set before overwriting scratch media". Configure the jobs as overwrite only. 

With these settings, after completing one iteration BE will use the oldest among the recyclable medias for overwriting, which means the medias will be used in the same order.

Regards...

[bickyz]

First of all I am sorry for typo, Daily should be Incremental NOT differential.

I am backing up huge data, weekly goes about 2.3 terabyte and daily about 250-300 gigabyte . Its a media project data at college and our department is backing up. These are video clips, audio clips created by project students. We have been given a HP Autoloader and Tapes with the local department Backup Exec 2010 server.

So far this is what I have done
Labelled each tapes.
Put daily tapes on Daily media sets and setup overwrite protection as 1 weeks and append period Infinite Allow Append.
Put weekly tapes on Weekly media sets and setup overwrite protection as 5 weeks and append period Infinite Allow Append.
Created a Daily Inceremental Job - Media Set as: Daily; Append to media, overwrite if not appendable media is available.
Created a Wekly Full Job - Media Set as: Weekly; Append to media, overwrite if not appendable media is available.
Media Management - Media overwrite protection level: None; Media overwrite options: Overwrite scratch media before overwriting recycleable media contained in the targeted media set.

Please let me know whether I am doing it in right way or not. Now here Monthly backup is also a Weekly Full backup, where do I put it and what will be the OPP.

And if this is not the proper way, Please let me know.

Thank you and appreciate for the support

[Kiran_Bandi]

If you choose to append, daily backups will be mixed on tapes. For example, tueday's & wednesday's incrementals will be written to monday tape. Every tape will be used to append till it is full as you are using Append to media in job and Infinite append.

Regards.....

[Ken_Putnam]

To start with, you need to leave the tapes in the Scratch media set

When you placed them into your production media sets, they took on the properties as of the date/time of the move  That is if you have a 6 day OPP for Daily tapes, any tapes moved into that set will be non-overwriteable for the next 6 days

Let Backup Exec move them when the job starts  This may mean that you need to load the tapes for each nights job that day, until all tapes have been used once

[bickyz]

@ kiran
how do I setup the daily so that it wont be mixed.

@ken
are these daily tapes which needs to be in scratch media set.

Also what do i do with monthly tapes?

Could you guys confim that my configuration are okey according to what i want to achieve or I am in a wront path.

Just for info: Every I am replacing weekly tapes with next one queue.

[Kiran_Bandi]

how do I setup the daily so that it wont be mixed?

Choose None append in media set properties and start the jobs as Overwrite only.

Assign monday tapes to daily media set before running differential on monday and do the same on remaining days and for weekly backups&monthly backups also. 

Regards...

[bickyz]

Hi Kiran,

So does that mean I have to insert each days tape manually i.e. each day one tape at a time.

For Weekly I will be inserting it on every friday manually.

About changing to None in append period; there isnt None, i can only get Hours, Days, Weeks, Years, Infinite - Allowed Append

What do i need to do with Monthly tapes? What will be the overwrite protection period and append period?

[pkh]

Since you are using a tape library, life would be much easier if you do not trying to manage the tapes like what you propose to do.  Your scheme can easily be thrown off by the smallest hitch, like a failed job.  It would be better to let BE and the tape library manage the tapes for you.  See my article on this subject

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/must-mondays-backup-be-monday-tape

Also, with your proprosed tape labeling scheme, you would not be able to use barcode labels which will improve the operational efficiency of your tape library, e.g. there would be no need to do an inventory to recognise your tapes.  See my other article on this subject.

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/using-barcode-labels-why-and-how