BE10 inventory drive needed for every tape?

[kaizer]

hello
coming from arcserve, i'm used to seeing the tape refresh itself as it loads. I see that in order to see the tape in BE i have to do the inventory. So what happens to our daily backup if i just load the tape in the drive and never run the inventory job (i.e. i don't open be manager until the following morning)
will the job run normally?
or will it just be left hanging waiting for the media?

 

[nhbilly]

well if you set the properties on the media correctly then the job should run fine.
Lately my rotation of tape has been acting weird - won't allow append or overwrite - even thought the properties were set other wise on the media.

So I guess once in awhile running the inventory it shouldn't hurt. Piece of mind?

 

[kaizer]

thx for responding
what props on the media need to be set for it to be automatically loaded?
I just popped tonite's tape in there and did a test run - it failed!
then i did the inventory + test run - success
it seems like it needs that inventory every time????

 

[nhbilly]

well for me I have create
a media set for

Permenant archive - properties on these set is over write and append infinite

Weekly archive - Over write 1 hour period, Allow append


I am on a four week rotation, differential scheme
what about your current setup?

 

[kaizer]

we have a simple setup
2 sets of five tapes mon-fri
also allow overwrite /append
but what does that have to do with whether the tape will be available for backup once it's loaded (without doing an inventory)
?

 

[nhbilly]

I set it like that so I can work on a set of tape versus work with each tape independently.

I guess it is easier for me to manage my tape.

 

[justin2000]

u have to inventory every time u change the tape.

just setup a scheduled inventory job to run 10 minutes before the job starts.

 

[SQLBill]

Inventory just tells Backup Exec what the tape is. It only needs done one time - when the tape is put in.

It's like owning a store...how do you know what's on the shelves if you don't inventory them? If you stock rarely changes (like a tape library), then you rarely need to do an inventory.

The first time I load all the tapes, I inventory everything. Then I don't inventory again until I put a new tape in and I only inventory that slot.

-SQLBill

Posting advice: FAQ481-4875

 

[kaizer]

hello
thx for the input
but sqlbill, are you saying that be10 will activate a tape that's loaded at the time of the backup?
it seems to me that doing what justin says (i've already scheduled that job prior to my backups)
works. I guess i'm just surprised that be10 doesn't automatically just recognize the tape
If anyone knows arcserve, then you'll know that u pop the tape in and arcserve will show it in the device

 

[SQLBill]

You pop a tape in to the drive and BE recognizes that something is there. It will normally show UNKNOWN MEDIA. Inventorying it will tell BE the 'facts' about the tape (size, etc.).

On my library, I only have to inventory the tapes the first time I insert them into the library. When I had a single tape device, I had to inventory the tape every time I inserted it into the drive.

-SQLBill

Posting advice: FAQ481-4875

 

[sailaway]

Well inventory is not working for me. The media is not recognized. This is after a firmware update to my VXA-1uautoloader caused backup exec not to recognize my autoloader anymore.And after several attempts to reconfigure backup exec. I uninstalled and upgraded to 10.1.The drive is now online and I can perform some commands but not inventory.

I'm not sure this is the correct post for this so redirect me if there is another more relavent one.

 

[steveot]

Have you tried changing the emulation mode on the library?

 

[sailaway]

Thanks for your reply steveot. I didn't give you all the details of my misadventures. I had to re-enter the names of my library tapes and that worked. Silly me I should have known better. The media is not recognized because i didn't put the names in. Someone should post a FAQ on setting up tape libraries here.