ARCserve Tape Config Help

[plattze]

Hi Guys,

We've recently just moved over to ARCserve (from Veritas, which FYI, I never originally configured so this is the first time I'm configuration a tape rotation/backup)

Basically, we have 2 sets of 7 tapes, which we keep in two groups. So either a set is inside the Dell Tape thing, or they are sitting on top.

We want to do full backups every night (this part is fine, I've configured the source without a problem, and scheduling it is fine)

However, the part i'm confused about is the actual tape/group/pool config.

The plan is to have each set of 7 tapes, last a working week. So on a Monday morning, the current set of tapes is last weeks backups, so we swap them over and keep them, and then we put in the other set to backup the current working week.

How do I do this?

I want the nightly backups to be written to the 'set' of tapes (not individual tapes).

So far I am only working with a single set of 7 tapes, I created a group GROUP1, and put them in there. I've run a couple backups fine, but because each tape is 100GB, it's complaining now that 'Media is full'. It's trying to write, and only write to tape 1 of the 7, and isn't sequentially writing data to after the end of the last backup.

How do I make it do this?

 

[davidmichel]

Do a Quick Erase Plus on the tapes, then the job will be able to use them when it needs to span.

 

[plattze]

Thanks for the reply, that got it working.

However, how do I implement tape weekly cycling? This set which I originally set it up with was working fine, but now that set is full, and ARCserve will not write anything more to it.

So I've ejected the current set of tapes in it, and inserted the new set. I then assigned them to 'SET2' in Media Pool. Am I on the right track?

I just want to when the current set of tapes are full, me to insert the other set and it overwrites all the data on them. THen if we ever need to do a restore, we can just put the other set of tapes in, and Restore, put the other set back in and continue on.

 

[davidmichel]

depends on how the media pool is setup. It has # of tapes and # of days. When a tape in the save set has meet both criterias then it will be moved to the scratch set.

so by changing those two setting you can determine when tapes can be reused.

Standard Rotation jobs have just one set, GFS has three sets, one for Monthly, Weekly, and Daily.