Two isses 1 with not able to append and overwrite option not showing under restore

[Dkromm]

I am fairly new to backup exec but have managed to get it almost working how i want but am having major issues with it still. Here is or back up stragey

Monday - Thursday, Saturday and Sunday
we do a full back up of our SQL server, 1 of our file servers and our Exchange server.
we do differential back up of our big file server.

Friday
we do a full back up of our SQL server, both file servers and our exchange server

We are using an HP storage works 1/8 Autoloader, partitioned as follows

Slot 1 and 2 are 1 partition
3,4,5,6,7,8 are all there own indavidual partions so we. Each job is assigned to a specific partition with friday getting slot 1 and 2 and the back up is over 500 Gigs.

The problem is if i set the jobs to overwrite everything works fine except for some reason it is hit or miss if they will appear in the restore there for i cant restore anything so if anyone know the answer to this that would be great.

the other problem is if i set them to append and overwrite if no appednable media avaliable the friday file server job will not run all the rest run just fine but the big file server job will get to like 380gigs and stop and ask for a appendable tape. I tried doing a quick erase on both tapes then wrote a small job to them and they both went to infinite allow append, the back up job ran and they went back to Not appendable.

We run a 4 week rotation on our tape system.

the Media set is set as follows
Overwrite protection period none

append period none Infinite allow append.

am i missing somthing here should i set this up a different way any help would be great.

we are not concerned with over writing our media as by the time we use it again it is 4 weeks old so if anyone can help with the overwrite option not appearing on restore that might be easier

thank you so much.

[Ken_Putnam]

couple of things to check

Tools\Options\Media Management  set protection to FULL or PARTIAL

On the media set(s), make retention/OPP  26 days.  Backup Exec seems to have problems sometimes if the Global Option is set to none and OPP is none

[Dkromm]

which issue would this fix? it not appearing in restore or the append not working?

[Ken_Putnam]

Sorry, I really need to let the coffee kick in before I try to post/respond here

That would fix Overwrite problems not append

if they are overwriting rather than appending, that  would be the reason you can only see the lastest backup in each partition

What are  the APP adn OPP  for the media sets?  If you had problems appending and the OPP was none, then that could be why

if you have a 4 week rotation for your tapes, and each job writes to it's own partition,  I'd use an APP of 6 days and an OPP of 26 days

Message Edited by Ken Putnam on 04-15-2008 11:17 AM

Message Edited by Ken Putnam on 04-15-2008 11:18 AM

[Dkromm]

i will give it a try

i set it up like you mentioned ran a quick test on overwrite and it showed up under the restore so i will run it for a couple days a let you know.

thanks for the help been fighting with this for a bit :)

[Dkromm]

Ok i think we might have an issue

So every night we have 4 jobs run that need to be written to1 tape that is a specific partion in the autoloader.

Last night the first job ran just fine then when the second job ran it wanted overwriteable media added. is this because it was trying to overwrite the first job? would it be better to combine all 4 jobs into 1 job or keep them as 4 seperate jobs running at 4 seperate times?

[Ken_Putnam]

I'd leave them as 4 separate jobs.  You just need to make the first job of the night Overwrite and the rest Append

I think this is the reason that jobs were disappearing  before.  If all the jobs were Overwrite, and the media set(s) had an OPP of none, then the second would overwrite the first, the third would overwrite the second, etc

[Dkromm]

great minds must think a like because that was my thought  to :)

so i set up the opp to be 28 days and the append to be 7 and we will go from there thanks for all the hlep

[Dkromm]

that seemed to be just the ticket backup worked great last night.

now i guess the challenege comes tomorrow as it is a two tape day.

I have found i have to quick erase the tapes first to get the overwrite protections back in alignment but that should be corrected the second time around as the tapes should end there protection 2 days before they get used.

once again thank you so much.