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Daily backups to only one tape at a time

TOURGolf
Level 2

Hello,

 

Let me first tell you the intended goal of what we hope to obtain.  We would like all of our daily jobs to write to one drive.  With this, we hope to minimalize tape usage.  As it stands, we use 18 tapes per week for daily jobs (which are sent off-site for three months), so this really adds up really quickly.  

 

To back files up, we have a TS3310 with six tape drives.  All of the drives are hcart3 density.

 

Currently, we have around twenty policies.  As all of these policies kick off at midnight, they're put into the activity monitor and they start writing to tapes.  Problem is, the daily jobs write to all six tape drives (thus, using six tapes).  When we're sending six tapes off-site per day...and 18 per week...you can see how this really adds up.  We believe by telling all of our daily policies to backup to one, and only one drive, we can use the full amount of each single tape before moving on to a second tape.

 

I spoke with NetBackup/Symantec today, and they informed me what we want to do is impossible.  They let us know we would have to change the density, thus deleting all of our daily tapes right now.  I have a really hard time believing that NetBackup is not intelligent enough to accomplish this.

 

We figured out how to get all of one policiy to write to one tape drive, but we cannot figure out how to get all twenty policies to write to the same drive (outside of downing the other drives).

 

Does anyone have experience with this, or can provide a little guidance

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

Stumpr2
Level 6

This can be done with storage unit definition and multiplexing

Create a new storage unit with max concurrent drives set to 1 and multiplexing to 18

in each policy:

override the storage unit for the daily schedule to use the new storage unit.

Set media multiplexing to 18 in the daily schedule

 

View solution in original post

9 REPLIES 9

Stumpr2
Level 6

This can be done with storage unit definition and multiplexing

Create a new storage unit with max concurrent drives set to 1 and multiplexing to 18

in each policy:

override the storage unit for the daily schedule to use the new storage unit.

Set media multiplexing to 18 in the daily schedule

 

Darren_Dunham
Level 6

Also, with 6.5, you could change the volume pool to have only 1 "partially full media".

 

--

Darren

TOURGolf
Level 2

Thank you both for the responses.

 

Stumpr, that is what we tried to figure out and it turns out it did not work.  The problem is when you have two different policies, if they kick off at the same time they use different drives.  I might be doing something wrong...I'll look into this more.

'

Darren, I did not know that.  This could be the solution I have not seen/tried.  I just enabled it...and we'll see how it goes.

 

 

Thanks again y'all  

Darren_Dunham
Level 6

Stumpr's suggestion should work across policies, but all the policies have to use the same storage tape unit.  If you have multiple drives being used by a STU set to 1 drive, then something is wrong.

If you're using different STUs, then it won't work.

--

Darren

J_H_Is_gone
Level 6

A storage unti with just 1 drive in it should work as Stumpr said.

Verify that all policies use the same storage unit.

But the limit usage should also work.

 

AndreaBolongaro
Level 5
Certified

With a staging area, you may send all backups there and then de-staging it all using one single stream.

hope it helps

TimBurlowski
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited
What you describe is possible in NetBackup. A storage unit with one drive is the easiest way to handle it.

I also like the idea of staging to disk and then duplicating to tape as an option.

What plans to you have for your other five drives? 

MattS
Level 6
You can also use netbackup vaulting.  It basically takes your backups which are spread over multiple tapes and squeezes (the duplication process) them into the smallest amount of tapes for offsite rotation.  A lot of negatives come with this though, be sure to read all the documentation on vaulting before investing in it. For example, the duplication process has to take place after the backup jobs, the process itself can take a long amount of time depending on your hardware and amount of data.  Which in turn delays your offsite rotation.
The benefits though are that you can use all your tape drives at night which will make your overall backup window smaller and still send a single tape offsite.  This allows room for data growth without having to constantly change your NB policies/environment. You also now have 2 copies of your data, decreasing your chances of loosing data due to tape failure.

Lots of pluses and minuses, read up on it, only you really know if it will work for your environment.

Rakesh_Khandelw
Level 6
You can achieve it by following suggestions provided by Bob and Darren but do you really want to have all backups on one tape?

Think about the scenario if you lose the tape or tape has read/write issue, you will end up losing the backups for all of the clients. Do you really want it?

With multiplexing set to 18, your backup for the clients will be highly fragmented on the tape and in case of restore it will take significant extra time. Can you really afford the extra time for restore?

I suggest you keep these service impact issues in mind before making changes.