Media Rotation 1

[Fruiteri]

Hi,
How to configure a media rotation for an autoloader so that it is able to perform a FULL backup at 1 tape per day. i.e. slot 1 - monday, slot 2 - tuesday, slot 3 - wednesday, up to slot 6 - Saturday. I have more than 1 schedules per day.

I'm using Backup Exec 8.5 and using HP SureStore Autoloader.
Currently, I configured with the "Media Rotation Wizard" and placed all the tapes into the rotation slots. However, the tapes were all backed up at the same tape everday. They were configured with "Infinite Append" and "No overwrite".
Do I need to placed them in the scratch media?
Will configuring the partitions for the autoloader solve the problem?
I'm quite confused with the days append and days overwrite after reading the documentations.

Thanks.

 

[kerr4brownlow]

Configuring the partitions will achieve what you want to do - that way when you define the Monday - Saturday jobs you can point it to use the slot that you want eg. Monday slot 1, Tuesday slot 2 etc. as you have pointed out above. Append time left means the amount of time left to append data to the tape ie. if it says 2 days then you have 2 days left to append data to the tape. Overwrite Protection Time Left is the opposite - it's how long until you can overwrite the tape again. They are 2 different things and have opposite meanings. You may have a tape that has 3 days overwrite protection time left but 3 days append time left - this means you can't overwrite the tape for another 3 days but you can append data for another 3 days.

 

[techwar]

What do you mean by configuring the partitions in the tape drive?

 

[dogmata]

Techwar:

If you have an autoloader with 8 slots for example, and you want that the Monday backups always use the same tape or tapes in the same slot or range of slots, the only way to do this is to create Autoloader slot partitions within the backup exec interface > devices tab. When you then define that Monday backup, you will have to specifically select that slot partition from the devices drop down list.

If you do not do that, to use the above example, backup exec will choose the media according to the the media settings you have chosen.

This is also one of the reasons why Autoloaders should be in random mode rather than sequential.

Cheers
Dog