NOOB QUESTION - how to schedule nightly tape backups that are taken off-site the following morning

[Rolf_Gitt]

Hi:

I'm coming from ArcServe, so there's quite a learning curve for NetBackup.

I have an IBM TS3310 tape library and NetBackup 6.5.2A. I'm successfully creating nightly full backups onto tape. The full backup policy has the retention set to 2 weeks. I want to use a different tape each night - so that after 2 weeks (10 business days - M-F) I have ten separate tapes - each with one night's backup on it.

My question is: I want to remove the previous night's backup tape from the library every morning, and move it off site. I want to retain that tape off-site for 2 weeks, and then bring the tape back and re-use it (overwrite it completely). 

I've read about creating a second policy - just for off-site (i.e. one policy that retains a copy within the tape library (i.e on-site), and one that spits out the tape each night at the end of the backup (for off-site storage - basically a "second backup run" toa different tape explcitly for off-site retention)) . But I'm still unclear on how to tell NetBackup how to remove the tape after every night's backup.

I must be confused about something, since I don't understand how to tell NetBackup to remove the tape each night for off-site storage. Do I do this via the NetBackup interface, or is this purely a manual task via the IBM TS3310 - i.e. tell it to remove the tape from the library.

I think I'm thoroughly confused at this point! LOL!

Many thanks for any feedback and suggestions.

[J_H_Is_gone · Accepted solution]

Well one way to get to auto eject the tape is to buy VAULT (add on to netbackup - cost to much for just one tape).

I also have a TS3310.

Just log into the console and eject the tape that was written to last night

(look at your jobs, or look at time assigend on the media, or look at the Tape Written report)

and eject the tape ( yes a manual thing).

or get fancy and write a script to figure out what tapes were written to and eject it with commands in your script.

[Rolf_Gitt]

Many thanks for the quick reply.

I'll take a look at Vault.  If that's too pricey for our two LTO4 drive system, then I guess a manual process is the way to go.

[Dion]

Seen as though you are fairly new to this, just a couple of tips if you plan to do this manually.

1. Have at least two volume pools - one for your onsite copy (e.g. ONSITE) and another for your offsite copy (e.g. OFFSITE).  This will keep the data separate and make it easier for you to eject the offsite media (eject media from the OFFSITE pool that are in the library)

2. If you have more than one tape drive in your library, you can choose to write both copies at the same time (this can be done by creating multiple copies at the policy or schedule level).  This will give you the flexibility to make an onsite copy with a retention of 2 weeks and an offsite copy with a retention of e.g. 3 months.  This has a slight performance hit (I found an average of 17% using multiple types of backups).

Good luck