rosederekj
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Question about Tape Idenfication and Ejection with Arcserve 11.5 SP3
I am setting up a backup scheme with GFS rotation, 7-day weekly incremental backup with full on Sunday.
I think I have everything setup pretty well, just had a question. I want to move one tape off site on a monthly basis, which I assume would be the Grandfather tape. How would I identify this tape from the tape library device after the backup has run, and if I rotate this tape from being offsite and then return it after another tape has run, will this cause any problems with the process?
An alternative is to run a seperate backup that is outside the GFS rotation, that does a full backup on a monthly basis with its own media pool. After creating the GFS rotation, Arcserve created the media pools for the daily, weekly and monthly jobs. How do I know which tapes I can safely use for this outside job, since the pools and tapes have not yet been created since the first GFS backup runs tonight?
I think I have everything setup pretty well, just had a question. I want to move one tape off site on a monthly basis, which I assume would be the Grandfather tape. How would I identify this tape from the tape library device after the backup has run, and if I rotate this tape from being offsite and then return it after another tape has run, will this cause any problems with the process?
An alternative is to run a seperate backup that is outside the GFS rotation, that does a full backup on a monthly basis with its own media pool. After creating the GFS rotation, Arcserve created the media pools for the daily, weekly and monthly jobs. How do I know which tapes I can safely use for this outside job, since the pools and tapes have not yet been created since the first GFS backup runs tonight?
1) You should have bar coded tapes so they can be identified.
2) It may be more than 1 tape, so you may have to look at the logs to get more info.
I hope this helps !
2) It may be more than 1 tape, so you may have to look at the logs to get more info.
I hope this helps !
ASKER
They are barcoded - so would I make the eject action from the actual tape drive or from within the software ?
preferably from the SW
ASKER
What are your thoughts on ejecting a tape from the GFS pool or from a separate backup pool? Any problems with taking the Grandfather tape from GFS after it is written to?
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ASKER
Great Answer - currently there are 30 slots and are all in use. How can I setup the device to work as a mailbox, which essentially gives me that free slot to use?
i hope you talking about mail slot, every tape library has one or more than one mail slot, and this will be used to eject the media after backup job is completed.
if you want to know if mail slot is visible through arcserve, go to arcserve device manager and right click on tape library and you have opion to import and export, this will show you have many mail slots you have
as you have 30 slots you place maximum number of slots in single group and then setup backup job and use eject media options from device manager through arcserve.
if you run more than one GFS job i would recommend to set up two seperate groups and incase of one you can move all media so that the rest of the jobs will not touch your GFS as i stated earlier because of retention time of the tapes.
you need to make sure how many separate jobs do you run every day, how many tape drives do you have and how much data do you backup along with size of the tape so that i can give you a setup
if you want to know if mail slot is visible through arcserve, go to arcserve device manager and right click on tape library and you have opion to import and export, this will show you have many mail slots you have
as you have 30 slots you place maximum number of slots in single group and then setup backup job and use eject media options from device manager through arcserve.
if you run more than one GFS job i would recommend to set up two seperate groups and incase of one you can move all media so that the rest of the jobs will not touch your GFS as i stated earlier because of retention time of the tapes.
you need to make sure how many separate jobs do you run every day, how many tape drives do you have and how much data do you backup along with size of the tape so that i can give you a setup
ASKER
Yes, I was referring to the mail slot - sorry about that :)
I tried to do Import/Export but got a message that "this device does not support import/export command". I do know that there are 30 slots and each slot has a tape, I don't know if that's the reason or because the tape library device is old (about 7 years I think) and may not support that feature.
I am actually only going to run one GFS job, assuming I can get the proper tape ejected without any impact, I don't see a reason to run a secondary or outside job. I am also going to be replacing all 30 tapes over the next month or so, as the current tapes are original (7 Years old) and are behaving a little flaky.
One job runs each day, I have one tape drive, LTO-1, with 30 tapes in it currently. I created the GFS job yesterday before posting, and the media pools you described were created. The job runs at 6PM, and currently the backup size of the job is about 195GB. I would like to try and trim that down some since from what I understand about LTO-1 tapes, they can only do 200GB compressed.
I tried to do Import/Export but got a message that "this device does not support import/export command". I do know that there are 30 slots and each slot has a tape, I don't know if that's the reason or because the tape library device is old (about 7 years I think) and may not support that feature.
I am actually only going to run one GFS job, assuming I can get the proper tape ejected without any impact, I don't see a reason to run a secondary or outside job. I am also going to be replacing all 30 tapes over the next month or so, as the current tapes are original (7 Years old) and are behaving a little flaky.
One job runs each day, I have one tape drive, LTO-1, with 30 tapes in it currently. I created the GFS job yesterday before posting, and the media pools you described were created. The job runs at 6PM, and currently the backup size of the job is about 195GB. I would like to try and trim that down some since from what I understand about LTO-1 tapes, they can only do 200GB compressed.
Here is the next action.
1) first we need to check if the drive does support import/export from vendor website
2) you need to set single job with all servers selected in gfs job
3) check if hardware compression is set on the tape drive, incase yes then you need single media for backup and again this depends on vendor to vendor, few tapes might give u 180 GB compressed and few 220 GB approx
You need to set up a job and monitor it for few weeks to confirm how it works.
hope this helps
1) first we need to check if the drive does support import/export from vendor website
2) you need to set single job with all servers selected in gfs job
3) check if hardware compression is set on the tape drive, incase yes then you need single media for backup and again this depends on vendor to vendor, few tapes might give u 180 GB compressed and few 220 GB approx
You need to set up a job and monitor it for few weeks to confirm how it works.
hope this helps
ASKER
It is a Overland NEO 2000 drive - I thought it was LTO-1 but it doesn't seem to be listed as providing that. Based on the error I received, I would assume what we have doesn't support import/export. It does support hardware compression through a jumper on the device, not through the software.
http://www.overlandstorage.com/German/products/neo2000.html
I'll have to double-check later today
I had a single job, it actually spanned over two tapes but I'm going through and doing some file cleanup to get it to one tape.
Can I view the capacity of the disk through the Media Pool or another location? Such as I can I look at a tape and see how much space it has used, and how much is left, if at all?
http://www.overlandstorage.com/German/products/neo2000.html
I'll have to double-check later today
I had a single job, it actually spanned over two tapes but I'm going through and doing some file cleanup to get it to one tape.
Can I view the capacity of the disk through the Media Pool or another location? Such as I can I look at a tape and see how much space it has used, and how much is left, if at all?
yes you can check the size of the media by going to device manager/click on tape and then click on summary at the bottom window pane.
ASKER
Wow - this one tape wrote about 130GB or so then went to the next tape. That's really bad compression, either that or the tape is really old.
I'm going to confirm the hardware I have shortly. I really appreciate all your help and will give points soon!
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I'm going to confirm the hardware I have shortly. I really appreciate all your help and will give points soon!
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:) m glad i helped you.
ASKER
Thanks a bunch - I took a tape out so I have a free slot and have the mail slot and ejecting working perfectly.
ASKER
Very detailed and helpful - thanks!
ASKER