How to divert all backup to one media?

[Nedcor42002]

Hi all

Our company currently using NetBackup 6.0, we had a backup library with 2 drives. Currently our head office had configured to run backup job using both drives simultaneously, which end up all the backup jobs (Policy) had split to two media.

Can someone please give me some hints how i can change the backup job to only use one drive and write into one media only? Where about from the Policy i can configure that?

Thanks.

Jack

[Dion]

Go to the properties of your Storage Unit and set the "maximum concurrent write drives" to 1.  Whether this will always use the same tape from the pool is a bit of a hit and miss.  If you know that you will only be needing 1 media for your backup you can make sure that there is only one media in the destination pool each day without using scratch (note: there are definitely cons to this though so I would suggest against it.

If/when you upgrade to 6.5, there is a setting on the pool that allows you to specify the "maximum partial full media".  Here you can set it to 1, 2 .... and it will restrict the number of tapes that can be partially full e.g. if you set it to 1, then only one (the same media) will be used until full and then it will move onto the next.

Cheers

[Nedcor42002]

Thanks so much for the help Dion.

[Rakesh_Khandelw]

What's your intent behind using one tape drive and/or one drive only? There can be adverse effects of this approach when it comes to restores. If you need to restore multiple clients at the same time NetBackup will do only one at a time because all of the backups images are on single tapes but if you have it split on two you can run the restores faster.

Unless there are better reasons other than cost saving, consider effect on your restore capabilites of this short term saving on media cost or drive cost. 

There are several ways to achieve what you want but the real solution depend upon what's your intent behind it.

[Omar_Villa]

if you dont what to use multiple tapes you can create a pool with a single pool and use it under your policies which will kill all the automate advantages that netbackup offers but have see many weird solutions and needs during my career maybe this can be an other way for you, but will highly not recommend it.

regards

[J_H_Is_gone]

you also have the option of

right click on the volume pool and select change

change the Maximum number of partially full media to 1

this way you should be forcing it to fill the tape before it uses another one.

if you eject this tape, then it would start a new one.

[Nedcor42002]

I was trying to do the right click --> change from the Volume Pools (eg. Library-daily), but from there, i can't see any option "Maximum number of Partially full media".

What i can see only is the "Permit only the specified host to access volumes in the Pool". Am I looking at the wrong thing?

Jack

[Dion]

Like I mentioned in my earlier post, this option is only available in version 6.5 and up.

Cheers