Backup Tapes being Overwritten
Created: 15 Nov 2011 | Updated: 26 Nov 2012 | 15 comments
This issue has been solved. See solution.
I have 5 backup jobs which run on a Monday night and finish on Tuesday morning using 2 tapes. The first job overwrites the media, the other 4 jobs are set to append to media and terminate if no append able media is found. Backup Byte count for 5 jobs totals 650GB and tape byte count shows 350GB this prompted me to look at doing a restore from the backup tapes and displaying whats on the tapes, only data from the last 2 jobs are available. How can these jobs overwrite data on the tape if the properties of the jobs are set to append to media or terminate if no appendable media?
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Hmm
Do all the jobs write to the same media set?
What are the OPP and APP of that media set (Overwiter period and Append period)
If this response answers your concern, please mark it as a "solution"
All jobs write to the same media slots which contain the two tapes.
Overwrite protection is set at 1 hour and append period is set to infinite - allow append.
There is a warning saying overprotection period is set to none. I checked under tools > options > media management and it is set as none in there
In the Media management you need to set the overwrite protection period level to "Partial" else BE
will not adhere the rules specified in the media set.
Amol
Ahh
should have asked about that also
You need to set that to either FULL or PARTIAL, or BackupExec will not apply any protection at all, meaning that any tape that it sees is considered a scratch tape.
If this response answers your concern, please mark it as a "solution"
but why did a job set to append to media or terminate overwrite the data?
When Media Overwrite protection is set to NONE, BE overwrites the media irrespective of the media
set rules and its by Design. Refer to below article.
http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO22315
Amol
Would this still apply when the backup job itself has been configured with the settings append to media, terminate job if no appendable media is available?
see attached image for job setting
YES.
Amol
would this setting still allow the jobs to append to the two tapes?
I would recommend the below setting for tape backups.
Select the overwrite protection level as "Partial" and when the job begins "append media
else overwrite if no appeanable media available"
Always select "Overwrite" options for backups targeted to disk.
Note: BE will append to the 1st tape assigned for the backup but if the backup is spanning
over multiple tapes then BE will request for an overwritable (scratch) media 2nd tape onwards.
Amol
Amol,
We have our first backup job of the evening set to overwrite the media set tapes and then the 4 jobs after that to append to media and terminiate if no appendable media is found.
Can i leave the current job set up in place and Select the overwrite protection level as "Partial"
Are you going to use the same tape for all the jobs?
Amol
there will be 2 tapes used for jobs mon - thurs, and 4 for the friday jobs
Again i would say. If protection is "Partial" BE will follow the settings mentioned in the
job and media set. If its "None" then BE will keep on overwriting tapes.
Amol
Amol
I didnt make that too clear there will be 2 different tapes used mon - thurs, and four new tapes on a friday. I have enabled Partial BE, and see the first job to overwrite the media and the remaining 4 jobs to append to media and terminate if no appendable media. with an overwrite protection of 19 hours which allows all jobs to complete and no data will be overwritten
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