Media Rotation and Management

[Eddie_Stevens]

I am new to BESR, I am used to BE. I am trying to apply what I know about media rotation in BE to BESR and I am getting confused. I have a Dell RD1000 backup drive with 3 media cartridges. What I would like to do is to have a full backup run on Monday, and then incremental backups run on Tuesday through Friday, all on the same cartridge. Then, each weekend, the cartridge would get rotated out. After three weeks, the first cartridge is back in. That one will get put in the drive and should get overwritten. With BE, the Overwrite Protection Period” can be configured to manage the media retention period. But how do you accomplish the same thing in BESR? I assume it has to do with the part about “Limiting the number of recovery point sets”. Does that value get applied per media cartridge or per backup job? I would appreciate any help that anyone can provide. I am setting this up in an office where there is no one that knows anything about computers. I just need a simple “tape-monkey” solution.

[criley]

I assume it has to do with the part about “Limiting the number of recovery point sets”. Does that value get applied per media cartridge or per backup job?

This value is per job, not per backup destination.

[Andreas_Horlach]

To add what Chris said, if at all possible, it is recommended that you clean off the media after it is rotatated. For example, when catridge A is ejected after a week of backups, and B is inserted, clean the old backups files off of B before the next backup job initiates. Old backup files on rotating media can confuse BESR and cause the cartridge to eject even when the button has not been pressed.

[DaveT]

Are you leaving the cartridge in the drive all week?  If yes, what happens during a true disaster?  Fire, flood, anything that could destroy the Server.

If you do a full backup on the weekend, and incrementals during the week, what happens if you experience a Server loss on Friday?  You will lose a whole week, unless the cartridge is removed each day.

If it's possible to add more drive space to the Server (internal or external), send the backup jobs to the new drive(s).  Drives are cheap, so you can keep two weeks or more worth of backups on the Server.

Once the full backups are done, put in a cartridge and dump the backup files to the cartridge, then put the media in a safe or move it offsite.  For each day, take the cartridge back, and dump the incrementals to the cartridge, and put it away again.

This kills two birds with one stone; you won't lose (up to) a week's worth of backup during a disaster.  And remember, a disaster can be natural (like listed above) or man-made (deliberate or unintentional).  The other bird is where there is only one copy of a backup job.  If that single backup gets lost, corrupted, damaged, you're back to square one...losing up to a week of data.  If you have two copies - one on the Server, one on the cartridge - you are better covered.

Dave T.