Veritas 9.1 often uses media not specified for job

[Aubrey_Starr]

I am running Veritas 9.1 on Windows 2000 Server using a Dell Power Vault 122T robotic library that hold 8 tapes with 1 internal tape drive.

I have my backups set to run differential Mon-Thurs., and Full backup on Fri. using 2 tapes. I want to rotate tapes by day and am using 12 tapes for a 2 week rotation. I have jobs, media groups and media set up by Day/Week (Monday Week 1, Friday Week 1 Tape 2, etc.).

Not always, but at least once a week, and sometimes more, Veritas will grab the media from a different media group and use that instead of the asigned media, even though there should be room on the assigned media, and the rules as far as I can tell should allow it be overwritten if there not enough room to append. I have examined the logs and all the settings and I can see no reason for this, nor can I find anyway to force Veritas to use the media I assign for the job.

This creates havoc for my tape rotation, and last night (Weds.) it overwrote Tape 2 from my Friday Full backup of 2 weeks ago. This is driving me crazy, and doesn't make me feel secure about our backups or backup stratagy. Please help!

Thanks in advance!

[636436804]

You should partition the library's slots. For example, you could set slots 1-4 to be incrementals, and slots 5-8 to be fulls. And of course only put tapes used for incrementals in slots 1-4.... only fulls in slots 5-8.

When you create the partition, new drive pools will automatically be created for you. Select these drive pools as the media source for your jobs.

[Aubrey_Starr]

Thank you for the reply. I will look at the partitioning the slots.

What I don't understand is why I can't tell Veritas to use this tape for this job, and no other... append if you can, otherwise overwrite it. It grabs tapes from other media sets moves it to the current media set, and then uses that instead, when there is no apparent reason to do so that I can determine. Veritas may claim this is a feature, but I say it is a bug... or bad planning in the programming, if there is no way to do this. The backup strategy I have implemented is a common one.

[tejashree_Bhate]

Hello,

Please refer to pages 139 onwards to configure partitions and also explation of how Backup Exec searches media for overwrite .

(title) VERITAS Backup Exec (tm) 9.1 for Windows Servers Administrator's Guide (English
http://support.veritas.com/docs/266190
Please let us know if you face the same issue after configuring partitions.

Note : If we do not receive your reply within two business days, this post would be marked ‘assumed answered’ and would be moved to ‘answered questions’ pool.


Thanks.