Is it possible at all (tapes management)

[mniechcial]

Hello,

From monday till friday i do full backup on some servers. I have a volume pools for each backup day and additionally in each volume pool I've got a two tapes. Daily backup fit on one tape, so finally I have a two weeks of history. I don't know what should I do, to get data from backup of  Week2 on tapes Mon2, Tue2 and so on. Sometimes data appends to previous tapes, but i would like to have each backup on different tapes.

It should be like this:
__________Week1______________-           ________Week2______           _____Week3____
Mon1     Tue1      Wed1       Thu1      Fri1           Mon2         Tue2    Wed2     (...)    Mon1    Tue1

It is:
__________Week1______________-           ________Week2______          
Mon1     Tue1      Wed1       Thu1      Fri1           Mon1and only when it's full Mon2        

[Mouse]

Technically it's possible using different tricks like different policies and volume pools, but NetBackup is designed with another way of tape management in mind and completely opposite to this "manual" approach.

NetBackup uses "image" concept instead of "tape" concept which is widely used in small environments like BackupExec, CommVault, ArcServe...whatever. NetBackup designed to manage backup images which can be segregated by retention period, volume pool etc... but the best practise is to run with as less number of volume poola as it possible because this technique substantially reduces tape consumption.

[mniechcial]

I know about this philosophy of NetBackup. Tapes with backups are stored outside the tapes library, so I need to be sure, that daily backup is on only one tape. For me it is more important than tape consumption. Now, I've got one policy per server and five different schedules inside the policy which writes to different volume pools. During the Net Backup course I've heared that full backup in Net Backup looks for tape with status "Available", but now I have two tapes in volume pool (Available and partially occupied) and sometimes backup writes on tape partially occupied first and only when it will be full, Net Backup change the tape to the Available one.

[Mouse]

Ok, if you are already familiar with NBU concept of tape management, you should know that you cannot direct NBU to write to "this particular tape". If you have two AVAILABLE tapes in the same volume pool, NBU will decide where to write using its own algorithm.

If you want prevent writing, just suspend these medias (manual process) or eject them using vault option.

I believe vault option might be the only option for the automated offsite tape management

[mniechcial]

Ok, so from the beginning. I have two tapes in one volume pool, and on Mon1, NBU writes to tape Mon1. Next Monday, I have one tape partially occupied and one Available (with no data). My goal is to force NBU to write to this one Available tape (not this partially occupied).

[Mouse]

Ok, let me repeat it once again - you cannot force NBU to write to particular media because it is not designed to work this way.

You can only *simulate* this behavior by SUSPENDING/FREEZING all the tapes in the pool except the media you want to use for this backup or eject all other tapes.

suspending/freezing is manual or script job. eject can be automated using vault option.

[J_H_Is_gone]

I completely agree with Mouse - you are trying to get NB to do something against its nature.

On Monday eject Monday wk1
next Friday eject Monday wk2 and inject Monday wk1

or

On Monday suspend Monday wk1
next Friday suspend Monday wk2 and unsuspend Monday wk1

This is your only choice.