tape load order in a library - is it least free space first?

[Steve_Tanti]

Hi,

I'd like to confirm my suspicion that when using a tape library and a job requires a tape to append to, does BE select the tape with the least amount of space free. If so, I'm assuming this is in an attempt to get the most use out of each tape.

If this is the case, I think the idea is flawed in that if you had two tapes to choose from, one had 30GB free and another had 800GB free and the next job was 500GB, it would use up the 30GB tape and then grab a scratch tape. In effect using 3 tapes where it could easily have just used two.

If my thoughts are correct, is there a way to change this behaviour so that it selects the tape that has the MOST free so that overall BE uses less tapes?

Cheers,

Steve.

[Hywel_Mallett]

Have a look at How Backup Exec selects media

[Steve_Tanti]

Thanks for that. I had not found that site yet.

Well that's a bit of a dissapointing revelation to find that the selection criteria is just how old the media is rather than try to use the available media in an intelligent way to minimise the amount of media used.

Any idea if that's been updated in 11d?

Cheers,

Steve.

[Ken_Putnam]

Nope, no change

And it does make sense, in a way.  If you select HW compression, BackupExec has absolutely no way of knowing how much of a tape has actually been used

Also, for most rotation schemes, length of retention is more important than using tape space efficiently.  And yes this does mean that you probably wind up spending more on tapes than you would really like to

[Steve_Tanti]

Ahh yeah.. you do have a point there about the compression.

Thanks for the help guys.

Steve.