Prevent tape unload between jobs
In this discussion,
https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/backup-selection-lists-best-practices
Ken Putnam advocated the break up of big selection lists into small ones. This makes sense.
My only concern is that the backup time will increase due to the unloading and loading of the tape between jobs. For stand-alone drives, the tape will remain in the drive unless the job specifies that it is ejected after the job is completed. The tape is also positioned at where it is last written so the next job will carry on from there, if append is specified. For robotic libraries, I believe the tape will be unload automatically after each job. If I am correct, then between each job, the tape would be rewinded, returned to the slot, then returned to the drive, seek to the last written position and then the actual backup write begins. All this is mechanical and will definitely increase the overall backup time.
Is there a way to prevent the tape from being unloaded between jobs in a robotic library?
Comments
Backup Exec does not have any
Backup Exec does not have any control over this default behaviour of robotic library. All backup jobs run by backup exec, will send a complete signal to the robotic library, who will go and take the tape out of drive and place it back to the slot. There is no way to prevent this default behaviour from Backup Exec. A new job will be a new device request and also may have any media set or any device, and not necessarily same tape would be picked up, so the default behaviour take by Backup Exec is to place the tape back to the slot after each job run.
Thanks
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