ArcServe 2000 not appending to tapes

[tapemeister]

The first job is scripted to overwrite the tape giving it a new name, such as a_mon_bs70. This job backs up and finishes fine. The second scripted job starts and it is to append to a_mon_bs70. But instead of doing this, it takes a blank tape and formats it with the above mentioned label, giving it a different tape id as well.

We just upgraded from 6.61 to 2000 and I for one am not impressed at all. This alone has proven to be a big problem for us especially with the amount of extra tapes being wasted.

We have somewhat a unique tape rotation. We have six tapes that rotate sunday through friday and these are of 5 set, sets a to e. We have a second set of sunday tapes in a 6 week rotation of u to z. This extra tape becomes a month end tape on the first sunday of the month. Month end meaning permanent archive.

Also need to note we do all full backups.

Computer Associates have been little/no help. They want me to have a 2 hour window between backups, which is impossible in a 24/7 shop.

Any help anyone can give will be most appreciated.

Thank you,

The Tapemeister

 

[ARCserveGuru]

Is this script for the second job completely different to the first job? if it isn't different then theres your problem, it will just keep overwriting. Also, have you made sure that the job options for the second job come up as "Append to Media" for the first media.

sounds like a very unique rotation, how did it perform under 6.61?

guru

 

[tapemeister]

To answer your questions, the script is completely different even a different server. And it is listed as to append.

What I did last night was have my afternoon person call me after the tapes were loaded and mounted. I then modified the jobs pointing each to its respective tape.

My problem showed up again this morning but only on one of the 3 backup servers I have. This is getting better, but I don't think it is efficient to have to do this each and every night.

As for my rotation and 6.61 it performed GREAT! This is why I am so frustrated here. Never have I experienced things of this nature before.

 

[ARCserveGuru]

Ay? so it's working on two of your three servers? hmmmm, I guess you'll have to see what your doing differently between the servers and replicate as best you can the scripts that are working.

guru

 

[tapemeister]

Disregard my last statement. After further review, I was wrong in say that. It did not use a 2nd seq 1 tape because there were no other jobs following it...dah!

Anyway, I am still struggling with the problem. I am starting to become suspicious of my tape drives. I was at AS's tech site this afternoon and check on acceptable devices. Mine are out there, but I need their firmware upgraded. I believe I did that about 4 years ago. So I do have a message in to ADIC about that.

But the append issue is something to look at for there are others I see out there having similar problems.

Tapemeister (Dano)

 

[wamason]

I have a couple of jobs that's appending without any problem. In the destination I DO NOT put a tape label. If I remember correctly I only specify the particular drive that I would like the job to be appended to. Fortunately for me the tape that I need to append to will always be in the drive at that particular time. Obviously in options I will make sure that the job will append and NOT overwrite the tape. Hope this helps in some way.