Multiplex multiple policies to single drive.

[Roger_McCoy]

Hi, I am trying to multiplex multiple policies onto a single drive.  I have 3 servers at remote locations that are the last jobs to run.  2 are located in the same location and the third is at a different location.  I have the 2 servers in a policy and the third server in its own policy.  I have 2 drives in my library.  I have a storage unit called "Offsite" and a single drive allocated to this storage unit.  I have set multiplexing to "6" on this storage unit. I only allocate one drive because I would like the other available in case other jobs might need it.

Basically, the problem I am having is that the 2 servers in one policy will begin backing up but the third server will not start until the other 2 have completed.  I am trying to get the third server to backup simultaneously with the other 2 servers.  Thanks in advance for any assistance.

[Andy_Welburn]

What's the Media Multiplexing set to in the Schedules of the Policies concerned?

Are they also set to different retention periods? NetBackup will not mix retention periods on media by default.

[Roger_McCoy]

The Media Multiplexing on the policy with 2 servers is set to "2" and the other policy with the single server is set to "1"

The retention periods are the same on both policies, 1 month (level 3).

[Andy_Welburn · Accepted solution]

Have you tried bumping these up? All indications are that this should only affect the schedule/policy that's changed, but you never know! (a setting of 1 being no multiplexing - maybe it's reading that as no multistreaming at all?).

I presume the other jobs that kick off don't have more streams running than the 6 you specified at the Storage Unit level?

[Roger_McCoy]

  That worked!  Although I'm not exactly sure how Netbackup adds the jobs up.  I initially increased the one schedule from a media multiplexing setting of "1" to "2"  When I launched the two policies only 2 of the 3 servers starting backing up.  I cancelled all of the jobs and increased both policies multiplexing to "4"  I launched both policies again and all three servers starting backing up to a single drive.  

Thanks for your help Andy.

[Andy_Welburn]

Glad to help - I was starting to convince myself tho' that it wouldn't have any effect, & still not too sure as to why it should!!

[Ron_Cohn]

Andy,

The only issue that I see is if you are using NBU Vault (since it works at images level - but that is another story).

In my situation, I set multiplexing on the policies to 32 and control the multiplexing at the tape drive itself (the number of concurrent writes).  If you have lots of policies, this makes tuning easier.