Veritas Backup Exec - duplicate to tape issue (from b2d)

[neoadmin]

I'm currently running a backup strategy, as such that I have 5 jobs (running at the same time, offset each by 5 minutes) backing up several servers contained in Selection Lists to a Backup-to-disk device in Backup Exec 9.1.

I then make another selection list for all the 5 bits of virtual tape media that are produced from the above jobs, and have one job, that runs and duplicates these pieces of virtual media to tape. The virtual pieces of media (backup-to-disk files) are set to overwrite period 2hours, meaning that every day the 5 files contain last nights backups (theyre updated/overwritten each night).

The problem appears to be that when it does the first backup, and i make the selection list for the disk -> tape duplicate job, it will work fine, although as soon as the backup runs again, the 'duplicate-to-tape's selection becomes invalid and lists 'Catalog not found' for all selections in the list. I presume this is caused by it creating effectively a new set in the virtual media, meaning every day (before my disk -> tape duplicate job runs) I have to change the selection list to contain last nights 5 b2d virtual tapes again, to refresh the selection lists.

Does anyone know a way of still achieving the above, but not having to update the selection list all the time? - I would like to keep the backup strategy pretty similar to how it is now..


Thanks

 

[justin2000]

neoadmin - when you create a Duplicate job, it will ask you to either select an existing catalog or to choose to run after a job has finished.

The catalog's are going to be different every day I would expect, as the date of the backup set will be different.

Try creating the job to run straight after the backup has finished, see how you go with this.

 

[neoadmin]

justin2000 - that will not work, as I have to run several jobs together, as quite a few of our machines do not run at full gigabit/100mbit.. so to get more backed up in a shorter period of time, we run several jobs together (as stated above - 5).

The problem with this though it that we cant do as you said, and run a backup job straight after the b2d job... as several of the jobs to virtual media would finish together - thus causing a problem. The reason why we use the selection list is to combine the 5 pieces of media, into one 'straight-from-tape' restorable backup, ie not just backing up the bkf files, which was the the other option but we wernt keen on this as it makes any restore a 2-step restore.

 

[justin2000]

neoadmin

Do you know which job finishes first all the time?

If so, create the duplicate jobs to run automatically after the backups complete.
Dup job 1 will overwrite the tape.
Dup job 2-5 will append to the same tape - even append first, overwrite if no appendable media found (just make sure you setup media sets properly.
When Dup Job 1 is running, dup jobs 2-5 will queue after it, exactly like a backup job does, as there is only 1 drive to write to at a time.

I don't think what you want to do is possible, as the name of the backup set will change every single day, and I know you have to specify an actual catalog for the duplicate job to work properly.

 

[neoadmin]

justin2000

hummm, seems like that would work i guess... Just that, at the moment, I have 4 duplicate jobs, that basically do daily duplicate (mon,tues,thu,fri),weekly duplicate (wed), monthly and yearly..

Your idea would mean having to make instead of 4 duplicate jobs.. I would end up with 20 duplicate jobs.. which sounds a bit overkill.
As you say, if this is impossible, do you have any similar ideas, how I could do this, but still staging to disk first, then onto tape??


thanks again

 

[justin2000]

neoadmin

thinking about this and there is really no other way of doing what you want to do.

the backup sets will be different name everday - though the only real difference would be the date and time - and it would be extremely hard to guess these for say putting into a script with variables being the date and time.

It's the nature of doing duplicate backups because you aren't really doing a straight tape copy(in your case disk) - you are using the catalogs to determine what is on the tape and then sort of restoring it to the tape (hope that makes sense?)