Strategy with RDX drives

[Mick_Duffin]

Hi,

We have just replaced a broken tape loader with an RDX drive, we are using BE 2012 on Server 2008 R2

We do a full backup of 5 servers at the weekend then Mon - Thurs do an incremental backup. We will be doing a 4 weekly cycle

I'm having issues with overwrite / append 

I'm using a media set to keep for 4 weeks its using OPP of 4 weeks and append period is 6 days. From what I've read the RDX takes no notice of the append period.

I set the jobs at the weekend ( full backup ) with the correct media set to all backup to the same tape (1TB) which is more than enough to hold the data. All the jobs looked like they have backed up OK without any errors but when I checked the media it only had data for the last backup, so it looks like all the previous backups have been overwritten.

The last night I did the same with the incremental backups, but again the same thing happened.

Has anyone had the same issues, or is there a different way I need to set jobs up to use the RDX?

Any help would be appreciated.

Regards,

Mick.

[pkh · Accepted solution]

In BE 2012, you cannot append to a  Disk Cartridge Device which is what you would define on a RDX cartridge.

Did you target the correct media set, i.e. the one which specify an OPP of 4 weeks?

Click on the BE button ---> Configuration and Settings ---> Backup Exec Settings and check that you have set the Overwrite Protection Level (under Media Management) to either Partial or Full.  If this is set to None, then your OPP settings is not working.

[Colin_Weaver]

We have a defect in BE 2012 regarding GRT enabled backup sets on RDX drives (so IMG folders if you look inside the drive itself)  not being reclaimed (deleted) which causes RDX cartridges to run out of space.

At this current time the public fix should be part of the forthcoming 2012 SP2 update

Prior to this you can log a support case to get an Orphan fix.

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH192382

[Mick_Duffin]

PKH,

Thanks for your reply, yes it was set to NONE, so looks like this could be the issue. What would you recomment as the best option FULL or PARTIAL? thanks.

Colin, thanks for the heads up, as soon as I can get a good backup I'm sure I'll need to look at this, but couldn't I just manually delete the IMG folders?

Regards,

Mick.

[pkh]

Partial would be sufficient.

[Colin_Weaver]

If you delete the IMG folders outside of Backup Exec, using Eindows Explorer for instance, then yes it will solve the space issue, but will leave records inside the Backup Exec database,.

You can choose to delete via the Backup Sets area inside the Backup Exec console which will sort out the disk space and the records inide of Backup Exec which yes do give another option until we release a public patch.

[Mick_Duffin]

Hi,

Thanks for your help and replies..

One more question please...

What we are looking to do is with the incremental backups we would like to use a cart on Monday then the same cart on Wednesday but the Wendesday backup would just add to the cart and not overwrite the contents, is this possible and what would I need to do to achieve this? I'm assuming it will involve creating different media sets for the different days?

Regards,

Mick.

[Colin_Weaver]

With disk storage (RDX, USB or internal to server) the word overwrite and append refers to what happens to the BKF files in the storage. The terms do not refere to how the whole volume (or cartridge) is used - this is of course slightly different from how the same terms are used when it is a tape.

Note: IMG folders (so GRT Backup sets) on disk never allowed appends in any versions of BE, although 2012 was amended so that Append could not be used with BKF files.

What this means is that as long as there is disk space on the drive then backups will add to the drive (that is unless they find a piece of content on RDX  that is no longer overwrite protected at which point that content would be deleted by a reclaim operation)

With non-RDX disk storage reclaims can take place whether or not a job is running as the process has switched to a background / repeating check to identify media files that are no longer overwrite protected. This is the new DLM   processing and in the future RDX will be handled in the same way.

[Mick_Duffin]

Thanks Colin, great explaination, I think I understand what I need to do now. 

Thanks again.

Mick.