Media to be created

[giorgiom]

I'd like to improve a GFS rotation solution for my servers.
I'm using Arcserve 2000 on Win 2000 sp4 system.
I have some questions to submit and I hope someone can help me:

1. Do I have to create 7 media (dly) + 12 media (mly) + 54 media (wly) and assign them to the relative pools ?
2. I have more then one job scheduled because I'd like to organize my backup operations for different server (with client agent) width different job, can I use the same media for all my jobs or I have to create different medias ? In other words, I must have more then one Monday media ora I can use the same Monday media for all the jobs schedulated ?
3. Is there any application that can help me to test the solution I have composed ? How can I be sure that my GFS based backup will work well?

Thanks for any help

 

[Cyklops]

1. No, be sure to have 'blank media' available when you start with GFS. ARCserve sort of 'builds' the GFS rotation scheme with new tapes (ie.blank media). Check the save and scratch sets of the created media pools after the backups have finished to see how ARCserve handles this
2. You have to create seperate media pools for separate backup jobs. CA has the usage of a 'common scratch set' in development which will allow you to share scratch media ( ie. media that can be overwritten ), but this is n ot the case with ASRCserve 2000.
3. you can do some testing on how GFS works when using backup to disk or the simulate.exe utility

 

[giorgiom]

So I have to:
- create only one media without give it a name;
- insert the blank media in one media pool;
and the GFS rotation scheme will generate how many media it's required by the scheme. Is it correct ?
If it's correct, wich is the name assigned to the media by the program ?

Thanks

Giorgio

 

[Cyklops]

When you submit a GFS job ARCserve will automatically create 3 media pools, one for the days, one for the weeks and one for the months. ARCserve will also give the tapes names that look like this : F-POOL-TUE-8/19/2003 where F stands for Full backup, POOL is the media pool name prefix ( and the ONLY thing you can add yourself, to distinguish one media pool from another ), TUE is the day and 8/19/2003 is the date. ARCserve will check according to the calendar which day it is and so, which backup to perform and in which media pool the tape will be assigned after the backup has finished. This all will be done automatically. Depending on the rules that are set ( check the media pool manager for this) the tapes will remain in the 'save set' ( ie. 'cannot be overwritten' ) for a certain period and move to the 'scratch set' (ie 'can be overwritten' ) if the demands are met.
There are standard settings for the amount of required media when you are using gfs, but you can easily adjust this by changing the rules for moving from save to scratch sets.
Keep in mind that when you use gfs and the tapes become part of media pools ARCserve will ask for certain tapes that it will accept for backup jobs. If there is no suitable tape available the backup job will fail.
Blank media however is ALWAYS accepted for any backup job that you configure with ARCserve.

Hope I'm clear

regards

 

[mohamdr]

Hi
if you Enable GFS the Media Name format will be

Backup-Type-Set-Name-Week Day-Date

Backup Type are:
F=Full Backup
I=Incre.backup
D=Diff Backup
W=Weekly Backup
M=Monthly Backup

eg: F-mohamdr-FRI-19/08/03

regards,
mohamdr