Weird tape drive behavior

[serverguy78]

Hello, i have tape backups that run Mon thru Sat. Then start again on Monday. The tape drive ejects itself every weekend. And then I get no media in drive status. Is this some built in function in Symantec that I can change?

[Ken_Putnam]

Are all your jobs appending to the same tape?

if so, is there an active alert to remove the tape?

You may be filling the tape up

[serverguy78]

Are all you jobs appending to the same tape? I don't understand that question

I don't recieve an active alert to remove tape

The schedule is set for Mon thru Fri

Its looks the backups will run good till Friday when the tape ejects

So it misses Friday nights backup for some reason

Here is what I found under the medial label for the last backup

Media type DLT

Serial QUATUM SDLT320

Overwrite protection until: Overwritable

Appendable until: 8/22/11 11:00:02pm

Hours in use: 12.5

Data 118.05 GB

Used capacity: 117.8 GB of 157 GB

Available capactity 39.17 GB

Total capactiy 157.0GB

Bytes written 277.7GB

Bytes read 272.1 GB

Mounts 13

Seeks 154

[Ken_Putnam]

Are all you jobs appending to the same tape? I don't understand that question

Are your jobs defined as Overwrite or Append?  Do you change tapes daily, or is the same tape used each night?

Does anything at all get backed up Friday?  Does the Thursday job complete successfully?

[Mahesh_Nayak]

from what i get is Mon- friday a single job runs daily oin a single tape drive, on friday the tape drive is ejected , On monday when a new tape is inserted the jobs do not run -- if yes

Seems like a issue with tape drive recognizing the media,  Stand alone tape drives do not have a auto inventory function, Suggest to schedule a inventory job on Monday just befor the scheduled job .

Comment

[serverguy78]

I guess its overwrite. I change that tape every Monday. Thursday's tape completes succesfully. Friday nights backup doesn't run. The tape ejects sometime on Friday.

[serverguy78]

 Yes a single tape gets overwritten everynight. I switch the tape on Mondays. I'll run an inventory job Friday after the Thursday's successful job. I'll let know you know if that fixes the problem.

[serverguy78]

I checked backup exec this morning and this is what shows up under Job Monitor

Job Status : Loading Media

Priority: Medium

Start Time 8/18/2011 11:00 PM

Elasped Time 9:45:49

Byte Count 42,163,846,756

Job Rate 666.00 MB/min

Media Insert

Please insert overwritable media into the drive

Does this mean that it tried to run a backup and then ran out of space?

[Kiran_Bandi]

Does this mean that it tried to run a backup and then ran out of space?

Yes, ~39 GB of data written to that tape and BE needs another overwritable media to continue the backup job.

Insert an overwritable media into the drive and respond with YES to the media insert alert.

Regards....

[serverguy78]

So why is it running out of space at the end of the week? I have it set to overwrite. The same job runs evernight.

[Mahesh_Nayak]

possible reasons:

Assuming the selection list is same throught monday to friday - following could be probable reasons

-- one of the tape might have a capacity issue have you attempted checking the sizes of tape drives

-- the Job running on Friday is backing up some additional data ( i.e: some update files , temporary maintainence related file which generally get cleared out after reboot )

--- Only option would be to take a backup on a disk as a test on friday and determine what is the Actual size needed .

please comment

[Kiran_Bandi]

@serverguy :  According to your previous posts your backup job is not overwriting the tape. You mentioned available capacity on tape is 39 GB and that much data has been backedup before asking for overwritable tape. So, the job started as append to tape. Ensure that Overwrite Media option is selected in job properties under when this job starts...

You want media to be overwritten daily then why are you choosing valid append period to your media set? Set it to none. 

Regards...

[serverguy78]

The tape capacity is 160GB/320GB. The backup sizes adverage around 42 GB a day. I changed the device and media option to Overwrite media. It was set to Append to media, overwrite if no appendable media is available before. I'm not sure where to change the vaild append period in the media set?

[Kiran_Bandi]

Append to media: That's why your backups are failing on friday. 

I'm not sure where to change the vaild append period in the media set?

You can change it in media set properties...

Now as you changed job shouls start as option to Overwrite only, append period doen't matter. OPP only matters. Set it to NONE.

Also i don't understand why you want to write to overwrite same media daily. If you have enough number of tapes, it is better to change your configuration for proper retention of data.

Regards...

[Ken_Putnam]

 I changed the device and media option to Overwrite media. It was set to Append to media, overwrite if no appendable media is available before

So the tape was filling up

With the setup that you have  changed to, you will, only have one day's worth of backups.

If this is not what you want, you can use two tapes, changed on Thursday morning, so that Mon-Wed are on one tape and Thurs-Fri are on another

of get a total of four tapes, and use sets of two on alternate weeks for a longer recovery period

[serverguy78]

I guess I shouldn't overwrite everyday. Let me explain our setup more in depth. We are using the Grandfather-Father-Son backup rotation. I have A B C D tapes. This system is working fine on every server we have except this one. If the DLT tape capacity is 160Gb then why is the tape being filled on Fridays? I think the settings are off somewhere. These 160Gb tapes should be able to write/append Mon - Fri if only 42 gb a day is being backed up.

[Kiran_Bandi]

As a single media is not enough to hold 5 daily backups consider using two tapes for daily backups.

Change your media set settings also accordingly. Mon-Wed keep one tape in the drive before starting the job and remaining two days another tape. And first tape should be overwritable by next monday. So choose an OPP of 4 days and AP 3 days for daily media set. 

Change job should start as setting back to Append to media, overwrite if no appendable media is available.

Regards....

[Ken_Putnam]

I have A B C D tapes.

Oh, you are using separate tapes each day, good

Then you are correct that each daily job should be able to fit on one tape

Is the same job run on each night using the same selection list?  If so, you are going to have to compare job logs from early in the week to the Friday job to determine what extra is being backed on Friday that is causing the tape to fill up

[serverguy78]

I'm not using seperate tapes each day. I only change tapes on Mondays and I want to keep it that way.  The overwrite/append settings are working fine on the other servers with changing once a week. So there must be something else thats not allowing it to write the tape to full capacity. I will also check to see what extra files are being backed on Thur and Friday nights.

[Ken_Putnam]

I will also check to see what extra files are being backed on Thur and Friday nights.

At this point, that's the only way to tell what is causing the job to exceed the tape capacity