adding tapes to a job that is running?

[Jog_Dial]

Hi,

can someone please enlighten me on this?  Is there any way...  to add a tape to my robotic library and import it into a running job that has paused because I have run out of space on the tapes that were already labeled and imported?

Basically, I can't label a tape, becuase a job is running, but in the queued state, becuase it is asking me to import more media.

Our backup just went from 3 to 4 tapes and I normally only keep 3 tapes loaded, but now I need a 4th, but i can't get a new tape in, becuase I can't label it so it will find it in scratch media and I can import it.

This seems like such a basic requirement that I can't understand why you wouldn't be able to pause a backup job, run another job to label the tape, and then resume the backup job?  Or am I just being particularly thick?

Would appreciate a reply urgently as I'm either have to start over a 26 hour backup as quick as possible or find some way to get another tape into this media.

Thx

[Rob_Nicholson]

Exactly the same question from me - just filled 8 x 400GB tapes and job needs another set of tapes to complete. I've tried to unlock the robotic library but the unlock job says no idle devices.

It does seem quite an obvious requirement...

Rob.

[Jog_Dial]

Hey Rob,

Not sure if this will work for you or not and it sure ain't elegant.  But, on my robotic library menu, there is a Reset option.  This basically reboots my robotic drive.  Takes about a minute.  After I have rebooted the drive, The unit is then unlocked and I can add more tapes.  Once I got more tapes into it, I seemed to be able to inventory, label and add them to media and then eventually the job started up again.

This seems like a real bodge way of doing it to me, but it got me out of a fix.

WHEN IS SOMEONE FROM VERITAS GOING TO ADDRESS THIS QUESTION PLEASE!!!!!!

Why can't we pause jobs, saving the state, and run other jobs and then continue the jobs, I mean for pete's sake, this has been going on since BE9 at least when I first asked the question and not a peep from Veritas on this.  I have seen this question asked over the years and years.. and no answer.

If we don't get an answer to this I'm not sure what I am going to do, but let's just put it that I am fed up to full with this problem and no one from Veritas standing up to acknowledge it and if I have to I "m going to get on newsgroups, cross post these forums, and basically post where ever I can get anyone to listen to the fact that this most basic of problems is not addressed by a so called "Enterprise Backup Solution Company"  and start asking the question of just why should we buy their software, why should my consultancy company recommend it? and bascically get down to work and find other solutions... I know they are out there.

I have to have to take this sort of tone in posting anywhere, but I want straight answers and I want them now or else I'm ditching BE and I'm going to find a replacement and recommend it to all my customers and I'm going to billstick the facts  on any faceless wall I can find on the Internet.

In the words of Stan Lee

"nuff said"

[Rob_Nicholson]

>Not sure if this will work for you or not and it sure ain't elegant.  But, on my robotic library menu, there is a Reset option. 

I can't find a reset option in BE itself - is this a function of the robotic library software itself? We've got a Quantum Superloader 3.

The official solution to this is to submit and Export and Import job to export the existing media and then import the new media. It's very tedious as each tape has to be ejected, one by one, via the mailslot.

I, like you, cannot see why it is so hard to allow the library to be unlocked, ejected, re-loaded and then re-inventoried whilst all other jobs are put on hold.

But then again, there are things in BE that I'm surprised have not been fixed like the restore user interface. It's still to hard to restore a particular folder to a point in time. That said, I think I did read something about granular recovery which gave a better restore interface.

Backup software is one area that I'm sure a new fresh dev team could do a much better job.

Rob.

[Jog_Dial]

after spending no less than 30 seconds selecting my font and point size to reply to you....

Hi Rob, seems we have found a common thread.

Might not have been explicit about the reset function, the reset function is on the tape autoloader itself.  It reboots the tape autoloader.  We have a Dell...  hmm 2 of them one is a dell auto loader with IBM tapes and the other is dell with SDLT tapes.  I'm at home and don't have direct access to the drive tags etc and have a crap memory.  And I've been oh vacation for a week, but tomorrow I have to dive back into all of this.

I am intrested in what you said about the procedure about the import and export.  I have never got this to work, it just sits there.

As far as I can tell, all the only some jobs will run if others are on hold.  Others won't.  I'm actually in my last 90 days of employment full time at this company and I have always done my best for backup strategies for them.  Afer that, I am moving into consultancy for several companies.  I am windows 2003 and 2008 certified (yeah, insane) and I was thinking of doing a Veritas course as well, so I could push the backup side of my consultancy skills.

Well, let me tell you this. My current company is really strapped for cash at the moment and they wouldn't spring for a support contract.  I said, ok, we need to upgrade, we can't' get support for BE10 anymore, lets get 12 and I'll figure it out myself.  You would not believe the problems I ran into trying to upgrade... What company charges you extra for an upgrade module to upgrade from their older software?  Any?  Not that I can think of.  How many problems did I have?  Having to run MSI unistall cleanups, nuke registry settings, reboot crucial servers!!! After two weeks, yeah, I got i all running, on my own, without support and I had their support contract for a year and it wouldn't have been any quicker, those guys are looking at the same FAQs and googling the same stuff I am.

In the end, I'm pretty near to a bullet proof backup system, by my own two hands.  I know their software as well if not better than their own support people, but I while I have some time between my full time job and my own company, I am going to see what else exists.  To be honest, I think Veritas did a fine job of things. Symantec is the word that sticks in my throat.  They  have take over great companies and turned them to mush.

Just my $.02  but glad to keep the thread going, I'm going to try this export and import job thing tomorrow as we have some time, but I don't think I ever got it to work...

Let me know if you get any answers Rob, good go know that someone else has these problems and it's not just me, though I can't believe everyone else is ok with this.  Maybe it's the actual quantitiy of data we are backing up, I'm doing just under 3 TB at the moment and it keeps rising... and I don't know when it is going to jump, so that's why I need to add new tapes.

Cheers dude
Bill