Vault Duplication with many differente retention backup

[#1]

During the duplication of Vault session, I have many backup with many various retentions and the result is that I have much off-site tapes. How to carry out the duplication of all backup does in matter the retention on the same tape? I want to reduce the number of tape off-site not in the robot.

[Rakesh_Khandelw]

By default, NetBackup does not allow multiple retentions on one tape and I think same get applied to Vault too. If you are okay with having same retention for all the data going offsite, then you can define new retention for the duplicate images in your vault profile and then it should let you consolidate multiple images to one tape.

Also, there is an option in host properties for media server to allow multiple retentions on the same media, you can use it to create your primary images and I think Vault would honour it and let you create the duplicate tapes with multiple retentions. This is something you can try, it may work. I have not tested it personally and not even heard anybody doing this way. So, make sure you are playing with test backup/data to test this type of config.

[Dion · Accepted solution]

If you are looking at saving on the amount of media you send out be carefull that by mixing mutliple retentions you might not be saving much on the return of those media... Look at this simpified example

Let's say you are sending 10 media out per day due to the multiple retentions per media.  Based on this, lests say that 5 media have a retention of 1 week and 5 have a retention of 1 month.  After 1 week 5 of your media will be returned as all of the images would have expired and the other 5 will be returned after on month.

If you mix the retentions you will save on the number of media that get's sent out daily (e.g. 7 per day) but if an image with a retention of one month sits on each of the media (because you've allowed it), none of your tapes will be returned until all images on that media have expired meaning that all (say 7 tapes) will remain offsite for the whole month.

You must remember that by defualt, media is separated by the following criteria; volume pool, retention period and owner.  If you have 5 tapes running concurrently you could also land up multiplying this by 5 partially filled media (e.g 5 tape drives write 100MB of data for POOLA with RETENTIONA owned by MEDIASERVERA.

I would suggest (if you are running 6.5) is to look at the following other methods.  1. Reduce the number of volume pools that get sent offsite.  2. Use server groups which will allow media sharing between multiple media servers.  3.  Set the Maximum Partial Full setting for your offsite pool.

I'm running backups around 180 server and I send off 3 LTO4 media per day for incrementals and about 8 for the weekly full.  When I got the system we were sending off over 10 media per day and a lot more on the fulls.

Hope this helps