retention periods

[phillbat]

i have a a diff backup that runs every night.  I have just checked the Media set properties for the retention period and i have the following values

overwite protection period

0 hours

Append period

none Infinite - Allow Append

Does this mean that backup are not kept for a specific number of weeks/months.  Are the tapes simply used until they are full and then overritten?

Thanks

[Ken_Putnam]

overwite protection period - 0 hours

Means that if a job starts 5 seconds after first finished and uses Overwrite rather than Append, the first will/can be overwritten

none Infinite - Allow Append

Means that you can continue appending to this tape until it is ful (even two years from the first job on the tape)l, at which point you would need to mount a scratch tape to finsh the backup.  The next job to run could overwrite the data on the just filled tape.

[phillbat]

so i dont have any guaranteed retention periods.  basically its just fill up the tapes until full and start over again?

[pkh]

so i dont have any guaranteed retention periods

This is because you set the OPP (Overwrite Protection Period) to 0 hours.  If you set the OPP to something else, like 1 day, then the tape would be protected for 1 day from the time the last job writes to the tape.

For example, if you set your OPP to 1 week and your job overwrites Tape1 on Monday, it would be protected until the next Monday.  If on Tuesday, your job append to Tape1 and spill over to Tape2, then both Tape1 and Tape2 would be protected until next Tuesday.  On Wednesday, if your job append to Tape2 and spill over to Tape3, both these tapes would be protected until next Wednesday.  However, since Tape1 is not written to, it would still be protected until next Tuesday.

[phillbat]

sorry i dont think i am explaining this very well, i have just taken over these backups and when i try to do a restore the dates go back for months which i am a bit suprised at considering the overwrite and we only have two schedules, daily diff and one weekley full

how can that be?

Thanks

[pkh]

It all depends on how many tapes you have and how often are they re-cycled.  As long as the data is not overwritten, they will remind in th catalog and hence they can be restored.  I am sure that you keep your weekly fulls for quite some time.  You can verify what you have on your tapes by creating a restore job, click on View By Media tab in the selection window and then clicking on the tape.  It will show what data is on the tape and when area the backups taken.

[Jomy]

It is better to you check your backp policy option which you are slected

Overwrite or append till appendable media is available

kindly refer media management in BE admin guide .your confusion will get over

[CraigV]

If the OPP and append periods are incorrect on his media sets though, going through the policy does nothing...

[Hywel_Mallett]

Have a look at http://www.backupexecfaq.com/articles/concepts/understanding-media-sets.html and http://www.backupexecfaq.com/faq/concepts/how-be-selects-media.html.

Once you understand the media sets and the media selection method, it all becomes a lot clearer.