Single tape for monthly backup

[kunkun]

Hi everybody!

I've the following scenario:

I've 10 servers which are backed up with the following schedule:

Daily -> Incremental back up, from monday night to friday night.

Weekly -> Full back up every saturday night (this job is superseded by monthly job)

Monthly -> Full back up every first saturday night of each month

I have 3 media sets created: 

Daily -> Overwrite protection = 6 days; Append period = 1 day

Weekly -> Overwrite protection = 4 weeks; Append period = 6 days

Monthly -> Overwrite protection = 1 year; Append period = 6 days

Overwrite protection level is set to "Partial with user prompt"

I don't mind what tapes the daily and weekly backup jobs use, as far as they are taken from the correct media set.

What I can't get to do is that monthly backup takes a single tape. When I had "Overwrite protection level" set to "None", BE2012 would take any tape from the other media sets and make it a monthly tape, erasing all data in it. 

Then, I changed "Overwrite protection level" to "Partial with user prompt", and now it only took tapes from monthly media set, but it used one tape for each job and it is stucked in one job asking for more tapes when it has plenty of space in the rest of the tapes of the media set.

What I want to achieve is that the monthly backup is made on a single tape, or two, depending on capacity.

How can I get to do this? Why BE2012 asks me to insert one tape, when it has plenty of space in tapes that are on library?

Thanks!

[CraigV]

Hi,

BE will select tapes that are available in the library, irrespective of the media set they belong too.

You can consider partitioning your library with 1 or 2 slots (if you think the backups will span 2 tapes). Target the Monthly job at that and your backups will only run on those tapes. Don't partition 1 slot only...if you need a second tape on which to span too, it won't look at any other partitions, and your backups will queue or fail.

Thanks!

[kunkun]

Thanks for the reply! I will do that and see what happens.

Anyway, why BE is asking me to insert overwritable media into library when there is plenty of space on the tapes loaded into library that belong to Monthly set?

Thanks again!

[pkh · Accepted solution]

You should not change the OPL to None because this means that you are turning off overwrite protection and all your media is not protected.  To have overwrite protection, set the OPL to either Partial or Full.

If you want to append to your tapes, your jobs must specify append and not overwrite.  Normally your first monthly job would specify overwrite to start writing from the beginning of the tape and the rest of your monthly job should specify append to append to the tape.  See this document

How to back up multiple servers to a single series of tapes in Backup Exec 2012

If you have specified append in your jobs and they are not appending to the tapes, then read my article below for some common reasons why

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/why-my-job-not-appending-data-my-tapes

In particular take note of the part talking about overlapping jobs.