Arcserve Tape Library and 2 Tape Drives

[macho]

Can anyone help me out....

How can i do a full-backup to two tapes using 2 tape drives? I have Arcserve 2000 advanced edition with Tape lib option.

I have over 300GB to back up and i'm using LTO 100/200GB backup tapes. I have library groups set up. I want the configuration to automatically use the second drive when the first tape drive has maxed out the first tape. Right now Arcserve asks me to insert a blank tape.

Is there anyway to get around this. I wish it could write to both tapes and drives at the same time, but not sure if i can do this with only 2 drives (RAID option needs 3 drives?)

please advise

 

[ARCguru]

You only need the Tape Library Option installed if you have two drives within the library. Otherwise ARCserve supports upto 32 standalone drives.

I think you want Media Spanning, which means that you must have both drives in the same device group. Thats when u MAX out it spans to the other drive.

If you have them in seperate groups then you can do paralell streaming where both groups could be active at the sametime.

The RAID option you can mirror the data on two tapes in your case. But then you need them in the same group with the RAID option installed.

 

[macho]

Thanks for your reply, but how would i know if both drives are in the same device group (for media spanning)?? Is media spanning a module that you plug-in like the tape lib option. I have the tape lib option already.

With Media Spanning does this mean that when one tape is maxed out then arcserve will eject that one and look for another to continue the back up?

With Parallel Streaming does this mean that you can have two jobs going at the same time, one in each drive? If so, then maybe this might be better for me. Since i could break up the full backup onto two tapes and run it at the same time?

How is this configured???