Question : Problem: Backup Exec 10d - Setting up jobs and media sets for daily offsite backups

Hi All

This is a continuation of
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Storage/Q_22103689.html   Last response from Andy Alder was:

Comment from andyalder
Date: 12/30/2006 03:24AM PST
 Comment  


You've presumably got a library as if it was a single drive the operator would take whatever tape was in the drive off site whatever its label.

There are two options for this.

1)  Partition the library into slots so there is one slot per day and direct individual daily jobs to the specific slot under devices tab of job property. Downside is that if the slot is empty there won't be a backup since it won't use a tape from another slot.

2) Set 27 day overwrite protection but label the media after it is written to. BE will autolabel it something like LTO000012 but the sticky label on the case can have "Monday 1" written on it. As long as you have the global properties to overwrite media in the target set before overwriting scratch this works fine and you can leave a few scratch tapes in the library in case a job overruns to two tapes. You can use a single media set for this rather than one for each day.To ensure the operator removes the correct tape you can schedule a recently used media report that will tell them which tape(s) have been used in the last X hours and get BE to email the report to them. Best to also make a list of which BE label matches which sticky label since on a restore it will ask for DLT0000013 rather than "Tuesday 2."

Answer : Problem: Backup Exec 10d - Setting up jobs and media sets for daily offsite backups

The media set allocation IS actually something that can help you reach your goal. If you set your append periods to infinite and allocate your tapes to the media sets that you want them to be in, then it should keep the tapes in the correct order. We use the Grandfather-father-son scheme with media sets and matching jobs for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday1, Friday2, Friday3, Friday4, Friday5d, Quarterly1, Quarterly2, Quarterly3, and Quarterly4. The AP for all are infinite. The OP for all are set to just less than a full cylce for that set (e.g. 6 days for Monday-Thursday, 3 weeks for Friday1-Friday5).

If you allocate the tapes to the appropriate media set and your rules don't prohibit the use of the desired tape by the job that goes with the media set, then BE should use the right tape.

Setting up 14 media sets and 14 jobs was a small price to pay - an hour, tops - to have my tapes being written to in an order that lets me keep track of them without having to use reports and constantly creating scratch media out of my tapes and rendering the data on those tapes unretrievable.