backup exec backup2disc adivce

[JJ]

Greetings,

I have recently moved over to disk based backups on a storage box and have come across a problem which imnot sure how to resolve.

Our current setup is daily working set changed today (mon-thu) followed by a woking set last accessed in 5 days (fri). Now in the b2d daily folder there are only 4 virtual tapes at 8gb each which is a weeks worth of 8-10gb dailies and there is only one set of weeklies too. This backup rotation has been going for around a month so i was expecting to see at least 20 dailies and 4 weeklies, any idea what has happened here?

Thanks

James

[VJware]

Check the Overwrite Protection Period (OPP) of the media set which was used in the backup job. It could be possible the OPP expired & the media was overwritten.

[JJ]

the media set proerties say overwrite protection is set to 0 hours and append period is set to infinite. I thought however that it would have just kept creating them daily until the tape limit in the folder was reached before it was to overwrite?

[VJware]

If the job was set to overwrite recyclable media instead of scratch media, then it is highly possible, that the older media sets expired & the newer sets overwrote them.

[JJ]

Thanks for your help VJWare. Looking into the backup devices and under the daily b2d folder i setup for daily backups the appendable until column says theyre all "not appendable (media full)". Ive checked the job itself but cannot see what you mentioned about overwritable/recyclable media. Screenshot attached. Any idea where to look next?  Thanks James.

[pkh]

For disk media, you should always set you job to overwrite the media.  Appending to the media will only prolong the protection period.

You should also set these settings under Tools ---> Options ----> Media Management

[JJ]

Thanks for that, I have changed my settings to match. Will this stop me loosing all the previous backups? What Ive noticed is happening is that each daily backup thats done it removes the corresponding one from the previous week from the recovery selection list. Where i expect to see a few months worth of dailies and weeklies i now have a gap of over a month (between the time we switched from tape to disk backup) where there is no media to recover anything from, but this weeks is obviously there. How do i get around this happning?

Thanks

James

[pkh]

It could be that your backup sets are appended to the disk media, hence one disk media may contain multiple backup sets.  The way to check for the existence of the backup sets is to set up a restore job and look at what backup sets are available for restore.  When you look at the restore selection list, make sure that the date range is wide enough to cover the period that you want to see.

You should also check your OPP to make sure that it is long enough to retain the data that you want.  To prevent future appends to your disk media, I would suggest that you set the AP to 1 hour.

[JJ]

Thats what I assumed was happening but when I checked the disk space being used by the virtual tapes I realised it was impossible for there to be more than a few days worth there. I have set the AP to 1 Hour as you suggested.The OPP is currently set to 0, since these are dailies (mon-thu) would i be right to set this to 4 days? 

[pkh]

When you set the OPP to 0, this means that your data is not protected at all and will be overwritten during the next backup.  You can set the OPP to 4 days, but ensure that you have sufficient disk space for all the backup sets.

Also, check that your overwrite protection level is set to Partial (see earlier screenshot).  If it is set to None, any OPP does not apply.

I would also suggest that you read the Media Management section of the Admin Guide which can be found in the BE installation directory.

[JJ]

Will do. Thanks again for all your help. Fingers crossed it all works tonight 

[JJ]

Ive tried this and now my weekly backups are failing with the below errors. I just changed the append back to infinite and now its overwritten my last backup instead of adding more tapes. Any ideas?

No appendable media could be mounted.
V-79-57344-33037 - Error - Mount failed.
Physical Volume Library Media not found.

e0000f16 - The operation failed to acquire the minimum number of drives and media needed.

For additional information regarding this error refer to link V-79-57344-3862

[pkh]

1) Try re-creating your job.

2) Check the OPP in the media set targeted by your weekly job.  Make sure that it is long enough to protect the data.